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ide  Literature  Series 

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HibersiDe  literature  Aeries? 


NATURE  NEAE  HOME 
AND  OTHER  PAPERS 

BY 
JOHN  BURROUGHS 


HOTJGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

BOSTON      NEW  YORK      CHICAGO      SAN  FRANCISCO 

•jC&e  fltonsibc  pecs?  €umbnb0e 


CONTENTS 

NATURE  LORE  1 

NEW  GLEANINGS  IN  OLD  FIELDS 

I.  Live  Natural  History  27 

II.  The  Barn  Swallow  32 

HI.  Insects  35 

IV.  The  Dog  39 

V.  Wood  Waifs  40 

VI.  An  Interesting  Plant  44 

VII.  Nature  Near  Home  47 

EACH  AFTER  ITS  KIND  52 

NATURE  LEAVES 

I.  In  Warbler  Time  68 

II.  A  Short  Walk  72 

IN  FIELD  AND  WOOD 

I.  Intensive  Observation  74 

II.  From  a  Walker's  Wallet  84 


COPYRIGHT  1913,   1916,  1919  BY  JOHN 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


Vfe  Ktbergfce  $re«« 

.CAMBRIDGE   .    MASSACHUSETTS 
PRINTED  IN  THE  U.  S.  A. 


NATURE  LORE 

EMERSON  in  his  Journal  says,  "All  facts  in 
nature  interest  us  because  they  are  deep  and 
not  accidental."  Facts  of  nature  are  undoubtedly 
of  interest  to  most  persons,  though  whether  or  not 
Emerson  gives  the  true  reason  may  be  questioned. 
I  would  sooner  venture  the  explanation  that  it  is 
because  nature  is  a  sort  of  outlying  province  of 
ourselves.  We  feel  a  kinship  with  her  works,  and  in 
bird  and  beast,  in  tree  and  flower,  we  behold  the 
workings  of  the  same  life  principle  that  has  brought 
us  where  we  are  and  relates  us  to  all  living  things. 
Explain  the  matter  as  we  may,  the  facts  and  do- 
ings of  nature  interest  us,  and  our  interest  is  bound 
to  grow  as  we  enlarge  our  acquaintance  with  them, 
— which  is  about  like  saying  that  our  interest  keeps 
pace  with  our  interest.  But  so  it  is.  Water  does  not 
taste  good  to  us  until  we  are  thirsty.  Before  we  ask 
questions  we  must  have  questions  to  ask,  and  be- 
fore we  have  questions  to  ask  we  must  feel  an  awak- 
ened interest  or  curiosity.  Action  and  reaction  go 
hand  in  hand;  interest  begets  interest;  knowledge 
breeds  knowledge.  Once  started  in  pursuit  of  nature 
lore,  we  are  pretty  sure  to  keep  on.  When  people 
ask  me,  "How  shall  we  teach  our  children  to  love 
1 


NATURE  LORE 

nature?"  I  reply:  "Do  not  try  to  teach  them  at  all. 
Just  turn  them  loose  in  the  country  and  trust  to 
luck."  It  is  time  enough  to  answer  children's  ques- 
tions when  they  are  interested  enough  to  ask  them. 
Knowledge  without  love  does  not  stick;  but  if  love 
comes  first,  knowledge  is  pretty  sure  to  follow.  I  do 
not  know  how  I  first  got  my  own  love  for  nature, 
but  I  suppose  it  was  because  I  was  born  and  passed 
my  youth  on  the  farm,  and  reacted  spontaneously 
to  the  natural  objects  about  me.  I  felt  a  certain 
privacy  and  kinship  with  the  woods  and  fields  and 
streams  long  before  the  naturalist  awoke  to  self- 
consciousness  within  me.  A  feeling  of  companion- 
ship with  Nature  came  long  prior  to  any  conscious 
desire  for  accurate  and  specific  knowledge  about  her 
works.  I  loved  the  flowers  and  the  wild  creatures, 
as  most  healthy  children  do,  long  before  I  knew 
there  was  such  a  study  as  botany  or  natural  history. 
And  when  I  take  a  walk  now,  thoughts  of  natural 
history  play  only  a  secondary  part;  I  suspect  it  is 
more  to  bathe  the  spirit  in  natural  influences  than 
to  store  the  mind  with  natural  facts.  I  think  I  know 
what  Emerson  means  when  he  says  elsewhere  in  his 
Journal  that  a  walk  in  the  woods  is  one  of  the  secrets 
for  dodging  old  age.  I  understand  what  the  poet 
meant  when  he  sang:  — 

"Sweet  is  the  lore  which  Nature  brings." 

Nature  lore  —  that  is  it.  Not  so  much  a  notebook 

2 


NATURE  LORE 

full  of  notes  of  birds  and  trees  and  flowers  as  a  heart 
warmed  and  refreshed  by  sympathetic  intercourse 
and  contact  with  these  primal  forces.  When  "the 
press  of  one's  foot  to  the  earth  springs  a  hundred 
affections,"  as  Whitman  says,  then  one  gets  some- 
thing more  precious  than  exact  science.  Nature  lore 
is  a  mixture  of  love  and  knowledge,  and  it  comes 
more  by  way  of  the  heart  than  of  the  head.  We 
absorb  it  with  the  air  we  breathe;  it  awaits  us  at 
the  side  of  the  spring  when  we  stoop  to  drink;  it 
drops  upon  us  from  the  trees  beneath  which  we 
fondly  linger;  it  is  written  large  on  the  rocks  and 
ledges  where  as  boys  we  prowled  about  on  Sundays, 
putting  our  hands  in  the  niches  or  on  the  rocky 
shelves  older  than  Thebes  or  Karnak,  touching  care- 
fully the  phoebe's  mossy  nest,  with  its  pearl-white 
eggs,  or  noting  the  spoor  of  coon  or  fox,  or  coming 
face  to  face  with  the  oldest  inhabitant  of  the  region, 
who  saw  the  foundations  of  the  hills  laid  and  the 
valleys  scooped  out  —  Geologic  Time,  whose  tent 
is  the  gray,  overhanging  rocks. 

Many  a  walk  I  take  in  the  fields  and  woods  when 
I  gather  no  new  facts  and  make  no  new  observa- 
tions; and  yet  I  feel  enriched.  I  have  been  for  an 
hour  or  more  on  intimate  terms  with  trees  and  rocks 
and  grass  and  birds  and  with  "Nature's  primal 
sanities";  the  fragrance  of  the  wild  things  lingers 
about  my  mind  for  days. 

Yet  the  close  observation  of  nature,  the  training 
3 


NATURE  LORE 

of  the  eye  and  mind  to  read  her  signals,  to  penetrate 
her  screens,  to  disentangle  her  skeins,  to  catch  her 
significant  facts,  add  greatly  to  the  pleasure  of  a 
walk  and  to  life  in  the  country.  Natural  history  is 
on  the  wing,  and  all  about  us  on  the  foot.  It  hides 
in  holes,  it  perches  on  trees,  it  runs  to  cover  under 
the  stones  and  into  the  stone  walls;  it  soars,  it  sings, 
it  drums,  it  calls  by  day,  it  barks  and  prowls  and 
hoots  by  night.  It  eats  your  fruit,  it  plunders  you? 
garden,  it  raids  your  henroost,  and  maybe  disturbs 
your  midnight  slumbers. 

At  Woodchuck  Lodge  the  woodchucks  eat  up  my 
peas  and  melons  and  dig  under  the  foundations  of 
my  house;  the  coons  come  down  off  the  mountain 
for  sweet  apples  in  my  orchard.  I  surprise  the  foxes 
among  the  cows  on  my  early  morning  walks,  or  am 
awakened  in  the  dawn  by  the  hue  and  cry  of  the 
crows  over  a  fox  passing  near,  a  little  late  in  getting 
back  to  the  cover  of  the  woods. 

All  such  things  add  interest  to  country  life.  No 
wild  creature  comes  amiss,  even  though  it  rob  your 
henroost.  I  sometimes  grow  tender  toward  the  wood- 
chuck,  even  though  he  raids  my  garden;  he  is  such 
a  characteristic  bit  of  wild  nature,  creeping  about 
the  fields,  or  sitting  upon  his  haunches  to  see  if 
danger  is  near.  He  is  of  the  earth,  earthy,  its  true 
offspring,  steeped  in  its  savors,  hugging  it  close, 
harmonizing  with  its  soil  and  rocks,  almost  as  liquid 
as  its  fountains  and  as  perennial  as  its  grass. 
4 


NATURE  LORE 

I  even  get  reconciled  to  the  unsavory  but  gentle- 
mannered  skunk.  He  does  not  disturb  me  if  I  do 
not  disturb  him,  and  if  he  chances  to  get  into  a  trap 
which  I  have  set  for  some  other  animal,  his  compo- 
sure is  great,  and  he  looks  the  injured  innocent  that 
he  is.  Only  I  must  keep  my  eye  upon  that  tail  when 
it  starts  to  rise  over  his  back.  There  is  a  masked 
battery  there  the  noiseless  shot  of  which  is  usually 
well  aimed,  and  is  pretty  sure  to  rout  the  foe  whether 
it  hit  the  mark  or  not.  Last  summer  the  morning 
light  revealed  one  held  by  the  leg  in  a  steel  trap 
which  I  had  set  for  rats  that  were  helping  them- 
selves too  freely  to  my  roasting-ears.  How  sorry  and 
deprecatory  he  looked  as  I  approached,  slowly 
straining  to  pull  away  from  the  cruel  trap,  and 
turning  upon  me  a  half -appealing,  half -reproachful 
look !  By  imitating  his  slow,  gentle  manners,  I  lifted 
him  and  the  trap  to  the  mouth  of  a  woodchuck  hole, 
into  which  he  quickly  crept,  leaving  his  trap-held 
foot  outside.  To  release  him  then  was  an  easy- 
matter. 

The  skunk  is  a  night  prowler,  and  subsists  mainly 
upon  insects  and  small  rodents;  but  I  would  not 
insure  the  birds'  eggs  or  the  young  birds  that  hap- 
pen to  be  in  his  path,  though  Mr.  Seton  says  his 
tame  skunks  do  not  know  how  to  deal  with  hen's 
eggs. 

There  is  no  prettier  bit  of  natural  history  upon 
four  legs  than  the  red  fox,  especially  when  you  sur- 
5 


NATURE  LORE 

prise  him  in  your  morning  walk,  or  he  surprises  you 
in  his.  He,  too,  is  a  night  prowler,  but  often  he  does 
not  get  home  till  after  sun-up.  Early  one  October 
morning,  as  I  stood  in  the  road  looking  out  over  the 
landscape,  a  belated  fox  jumped  over  the  wall  a 
few  yards  from  me  and  loped  unconcernedly  along 
parallel  with  the  road,  then  turned  and  scaled  the 
fence,  and  crossed  the  road,  and  went  bounding  up 
the  hill  toward  the  woods  with  a  grace  and  ease  im- 
possible to  describe.  I  suppose  it  was  his  massive 
tail  held  level  with  his  body  that  helped  give  the 
idea  of  buoyancy.  There  was  no  apparent  effort,  as 
when  the  farm  dog  climbs  the  hill,  but  the  ease  and 
lightness  that  goes  with  floating  and  winged  things. 
It  was  indeed  a  pleasing  spectacle,  such  as  I  had 
not  seen  for  many  years.  This  winter  the  fox-hunter 
with  his  hound  will  be  trailing  him  from  mountain 
to  mountain  or  from  valley  to  valley,  and  he  will 
drift  along  over  the  snow,  pausing  now  and  then 
to  harken  back  along  his  trail,  and  reluctantly 
expose  himself  to  the  eye  of  day  in  the  broad  open 
spaces.  Unless  the  day  is  wet  and  his  tail  and  fur 
get  draggled,  he  will  run  from  sun  to  sun  without 
much  apparent  fatigue.  But  if  his  burden  gets  too 
great,  he  knows  of  holes  in  the  rocks  where  he  can 
take  refuge. 

Any  device  that  a  plant  or  an  animal  has  for  get- 
ting on  in  the  world  interests  us;  it  brings  the  lower 
orders  nearer  to  us.  We  have  our  own  devices  and 


NATURE  LORE 

makeshifts,  and  we  like  to  know  how  it  is  with  our 
near  or  distant  kin  among  the  humbler  orders.  They 
are  ourselves  not  yet  come  to  consciousness  and  to 
the  elective  franchise.  When  the  burr  of  the  bur- 
dock, reaching  forth  its  arms  for  such  a  chance, 
seizes  on  to  your  coat-tail,  take  your  pocket-glass 
and  examine  the  minute  hooks  that  tip  the  ends  of 
the  seed-scales.  They  fish  for  you  and  your  dog  and 
sheep  and  cow,  and  they  catch  you,  not  with  one 
hook,  but  with  twenty  or  fifty,  all  at  the  same  time. 
But  in  this  case  it  is  not  the  fish  that  is  caught,  but 
the  fisherman.  The  plan  of  this  fisherman  is  to  go 
right  along  with  his  captor,  the  farther  the  better, 
and  plant  his  progeny  in  a  new  territory.  He  lets  go 
his  hold  upon  the  parent  plant  at  a  mere  touch,  but 
the  touch  gives  him  all  the  hold  he  wants.  The 
hooks  are  fine  and  hard,  like  minute,  sharp  horns, 
not  too  much  bent,  —  that  would  defeat  the  end,  — 
and  perfectly  smooth  and  finished.  Instead  of  hooks, 
the  weed  called  "bidens"  has  the  teeth  or  prongs 
armed  with  barbs  like  a  fish-hook,  many  of  them  on 
each  prong.  They  are  quite  as  sure  a  trap  as  the 
hooks  of  the  burdock.  Nature  never  fails  to  perfect 
her  device.  Natural  selection  attends  to  that.  Her 
traps,  her  wings,  her  springs,  her  balloons,  always 
work.  The  wings  of  the  maple  keys,  the  ash,  and  the 
linden  are  all  different,  but  they  all  work. 

Nature  seems  partial  to  the  burdock.  What  extra 
pains  she  seems  to  have  taken  to  perpetuate  this 
7 


NATURE  LORE 

worse  than  useless  plant !  So  far  as  I  know,  nothing 
wants  it  or  profits  by  it,  though  I  have  heard  that 
the  petioles  when  cooked  suggest  salsify.  It  is 
an  Ishmaelite  among  plants.  Every  man's  hand 
is  against  it,  and  nearly  every  animal  has  reason 
to  detest  it.  Against  their  wills  they  are  engaged 
in  sowing  its  seeds.  The  other  day  I  found  some 
burrs  matted  on  the  tail  of  a  woodchuck.  Birds 
have  been  found  trapped  by  its  hooks.  Apparently 
the  only  domestic  animal  that  it  does  not  seize  hold 
of  is  the  pig;  the  stiff,  smooth  bristles  of  the  pig 
afford  it  a  scant  hold.  It  possesses  more  original  sin 
than  any  other  plant  I  know.  How  it  drives  its  roots 
into  the  ground,  defying  your  spading-f ork !  How  it 
seems  to  drive  its  burrs  into  your  garments,  or  into 
the  hair  of  animals,  refusing  to  let  go  till  it  is  fairly 
torn  in  pieces !  See  the  dog  biting  them  out  of  his 
hair  with  a  kind  of  contemptuous  fury.  If  you  try 
to  help  him,  you  must  proceed  very  carefully  and 
deliberately  or  he  will  confound  you  with  the  bur- 
dock and  threaten  the  hand  that  seeks  to  aid  him. 
The  burdock  is  vicious  to  the  last,  the  old  burr 
clings  with  the  same  dogged  determination  as  the 
new.  As  a  noxious  weed  it  is  a  great  success.  Dis- 
courage it  by  cutting  it  down  you  cannot.  By  hook 
or  by  crook  it  is  bound  to  persist.  Its  juice  is  bitter 
and  its  fibre  coarse.  What  a  pity  that  so  much  na- 
tive grit  and  enterprise  cannot  be  turned  to  some 
good  account!  The  burrs  are  detached  from  the 
8 


NATURE  LORE 

parent  stem  almost  as  easily  as  are  the  quills  from 
the  porcupine.  Even  while  it  is  yet  in  bloom  the 
hooks  will  seize  your  coat-tails  and  the  burr  let  go 
its  hold  upon  the  stalk.  The  hooks  are  not  attached 
to  the  separate  seeds,  but  are  for  the  burrs  as  a 
whole. 

I  know  of  no  plant  so  difficult  to  prevent  seeding. 
Cut  it  down  in  July,  and  in  August  it  has  new  shoots 
loaded  with  burrs;  cut  these  off,  and  in  late  Sep- 
tember, or  early  October,  it  will  evolve  burrs  di- 
rectly from  the  stub  of  the  old  stalk,  often  in  clusters 
and  bunches,  without  a  leaf  to  mother  them. 

The  plant  if  unhindered  grows  three  or  four  feet 
high  and  bears  about  five  hundred  burrs,  which  usu- 
ally have  twelve  seeds  each,  or  six  thousand  seeds 
to  the  plant.  Before  the  seeds  are  ripe  they  are 
nearly  the  size  and  color  of  rye  or  peeled  oats.  Later 
they  shrink  and  turn  dark.  So  far  as  I  know,  nothing 
feeds  upon  them,  save  the  larvae  of  some  insect.  I 
have  examined  many  burrs  in  October  and  found  a 
small  white  grub  in  a  single  seed  in  each  of  them. 
Those  good  people  who  fancy  that  everything  was 
made 'for  some  special  service  to  man,  would  have 
trouble,  I  think,  to  find  the  uses  of  the  burdock. 

The  advantage  of  that  array  of  eager  hooks  to 
the  burdock  (there  are  more  than  two  hundred  of 
them  on  each  burr)  seems  obvious,  and  yet  here  is 
the  yellow  dock  alongside  of  it,  a  relative  of  our 
buckwheat,  that  has  no  hooks  or  other  devices  that 
9 


NATURE  LORE 

I  can  discover  for  scattering  its  seed,  and  yet  it 
appears  to  compete  successfully  with  its  more  lusty 
neighbor.  One  is  about  as  abundant  and  trouble- 
some to  the  gardener  as  the  other.  The  seeds  of  the 
yellow  dock  are  like  small,  brown,  polished  buck- 
wheat. I  have  never  seen  birds  or  squirrels  eat  them, 
and  what  secret  way  they  have  of  keeping  up  with 
the  burdocks  I  do  not  know.  The  burdock  plants  it- 
self deeper  in  the  ground,  and  defies  your  spading- 
fork  the  more  successfully. 

I  have  always  been  curious  to  know  why  the  birch 
is  the  only  one  among  our  many  forest-trees  that 
seems  to  have  an  ambition  to  plant  itself  upon  a 
rock.  Other  trees  do  so  occasionally,  but  in  the  woods 
I  am  familiar  with  I  see  ten  birches  upon  rocks  to 
one  of  any  other  tree.  They  sit  down  upon  the  rock 
as  if  it  were  a  chair,  and  run  their  big  roots  off  into 
the  ground,  apparently  entirely  at  home.  How  in 
the  first  place  they  get  enough  foothold  in  the  thin 
coat  of  leaf  mould  that  covers  the  rocks  to  develop 
their  roots  and  send  them  across  the  barren  places 
and  down  into  the  soil  is  a  puzzle.  I  have  seen  a 
small  birch  sapling  that  had  obtained  a  foothold  in 
a  niche  on  the  side  of  a  cliff  send  one  large  root 
diagonally  down  across  the  face  of  the  bare  rock  two 
or  more  yards  to  the  ground,  where  it  took  hold  and 
saved  the  situation.  It  was  like  a  party  going  out 
from  a  starving  camp  for  relief.  To  equip  and  pro- 
10 


NATURE  LORE 

vision  the  party  required  some  resources.  "Yes," 
you  may  say,  "and  to  know  where  to  send  it  re- 
quired some  wit."  But  the  roots  of  a  tree  always 
tend  downward,  as  the  branches  go  upward.  We  are 
at  the  end  of  our  tether  when  we  say  that  such  is 
the  rule  of  nature. 

The  winged  seeds  always  find  their  proper  habi- 
tat, as  if  they  had  eyes  to  see  the  way.  The  seeds  of 
the  cat-tail  flag  find  the  ditches  and  marshes  as  un- 
erringly as  if  they  were  convoyed.  But  this  intelli- 
gence, or  self-direction,  is  only  apparent.  The  wind 
carries  the  seeds  in  all  directions,  and  they  fall  every- 
where, just  as  it  happens,  on  the  hills  as  well  as  in 
the  ditches,  but  only  in  the  latter  do  they  take  root 
and  flourish.  Nature  often  resorts  to  this  wholesale 
method.  In  scattering  pollen  and  germs  by  the 
aid  of  the  wind,  this  is  her  method:  cover  all  the 
ground,  and  you  will  be  sure  to  hit  your  mark 
night  or  day. 

After  one  or  more  windy  days  in  November  I  am 
sure  to  find  huddled  in  the  recess  of  my  kitchen 
door  the  branching  heads  of  a  certain  species  of  wild 
grass  that  grows  somewhere  on  the  hills  west  of  me* 
These  heads  find  their  ways  across  fields  and  high- 
ways, over  fences,  past  tree  and  bushy  barriers, 
down  my  steps,  into  the  storm-house,  and  lie  there, 
waiting  on  the  doorsill  like  things  of  life,  waiting  to 
get  into  the  house.  Not  one  season  alone,  but  every 
season,  they  come  as  punctually  as  the  assessor. 
11 


NATURE  LORE 

The  watchful  broom  routs  them;  but  the  next  day 
or  the  next  week  there  they  are  again,  and  now  and 
then  one  actually  gets  into  the  kitchen,  slipping  in 
between  your  feet  as  you  open  the  door.  They  bring 
word  from  over  the  hills,  and  the  word  is:  "Sooner 
or  later  Nature  hits  her  mark,  hits  all  marks,  be- 
cause her  aim  is  broadcast  and  her  efforts  ceaseless. 
The  wind  finds  every  crack  and  corner.  We  started 
on  our  journey  not  for  your  door,  but  for  any  door, 
all  doors,  any  shelter  where  we  could  be  at  rest;  and 
here  we  are!" 

The  purple  loosestrife  travels  from  marsh  to 
marsh  in  the  Hudson  River  Valley,  and  as  its  seeds 
are  not  winged,  one  may  wonder  how  it  gets  about 
so  easily.  It  travels  by  the  aid  of  wings,  but  not  of 
its  own.  Darwin  discovered  that  the  seeds  of  marsh 
plants  are  often  carried  in  the  mud  on  the  feet  of 
marsh  birds.  Years  ago  the  loosestrife  was  in  a  large 
marsh  six  miles  south  of  me.  A  few  years  later  a  few 
plants  appeared  in  a  pond  near  me,  and  now  this 
and  near-by  ponds  and  marshes  are  lakes  of  royal 
purple  in  August.  The  loosestrife  in  late  summer 
makes  such  a  grand  showing  with  its  vast  armies  of 
tall,  stately  plants  that  one  welcomes  it  to  our  un- 
sightly marshes. 

Only  the  present  season  did  I  observe  a  peculiar 
feature  of  our  wild  clematis  that  a  little  close  atten- 
tion might  have  shown  me  at  any  time :  its  conspic- 
uous appearance  in  September,  after  its  flowers 
19 


NATURE  LORE 

have  faded,  which  has  earned  for  it  the  name  of 
"old-man's-beard,"  is  owing  to  the  fact  that  its 
seeds  have  long,  feathered  tails  to  aid  in  their  dis- 
semination. It  is  the  only  seed  I  know  of  that  the 
wind  carries  by  the  tail.  For  some  obscure  reason 
it  does  not  carry  it  very  far,  or  at  least  does  not 
plant  it  very  successfully,  as  the  clematis  is  rare 
with  me.  Instead  of  being  sown  broadcast  over  the 
hills  and  along  the  fences,  it  appears  sparsely,  at 
wide  intervals.  It  is  such  a  beautiful  vine  both  in 
flowering-time  and  seeding-time  that  one  wishes  it 
were  more  common. 

The  plants  that  travel  by  runners  above  or  below- 
ground  are  many;  the  plants  that  travel  by  walking 
are  few.  I  recall  only  the  "walking  fern,"  which 
now  seems  to  have  walked  away  from  my  neighbor- 
hood, and  the  black  raspberry.  Both  are  slow  travel- 
ers, but  they  do  reach  out  and  take  steps. 

Some  trees  can  fight  a  much  more  successful 
battle  against  browsing  animals  than  can  others. 
The  apple  and  the  red  thorn  are  notable  examples. 
Trees  like  the  linden,  which  the  cattle  freely  crop, 
are  easy  victims;  they  put  up  no  kind  of  fight.  They 
sprout  freely,  but  they  make  no  headway;  their  new 
shoots  are  swept  off  every  summer,  and  there  the 
low  stool  of  the  tree  remains.  The  beech  does  better 
amid  grazing  cattle,  but  I  doubt  if  it  ever  wins  the 
fight.  But  the  apple  and  the  thorn,  though  the 
13 


NATURE  LORE 

struggle  is  a  long  and  hard  one,  are  sure  to  win  in 
the  end;  after  many  years  one  central  shoot  gets  a 
start  from  the  top  of  the  thorny  mound  of  cropped 
twigs,  makes  rapid  strides  upward,  and  in  due  sea- 
son stands  there  the  perfected  tree.  It  will  now  bear 
fruit  for  the  short-sighted  grazers  that  sought  to 
destroy  it. 

Our  belief  in  the  uniformity  of  nature,  or  in  the 
unchangeableness  of  natural  law,  is  fundamental. 
We  act  upon  it  every  hour  of  our  lives;  our  bodies 
and  minds  are  built  upon  that  plan.  Yet  in  detail, 
and  within  narrow  limits,  nature  is  unequal,  capri- 
cious, incalculable.  Can  the  farmer  always  foretell 
his  crops  or  forecast  a  wet  season  or  a  dry?  The 
problem  is  too  complex,  or  our  wits  are  too  shallow. 

Last  season  the  hay- crop  over  a  large  part  of  the 
country  broke  the  record.  The  meadows  everywhere, 
and  without  any  very  obvious  reason,  doubled  their 
yield;  the  farmers'  barns  from  Pennsylvania  to 
Maine  were  bursting  with  plenty,  and  at  the  end  of 
haying  a  row  of  stacks  encompassed  or  flanked  most 
of  them.  The  trees  all  seem  to  have  had  a  super- 
abundance of  leaves.  On  my  own  grounds  we  raked 
up  and  put  under  cover  for  stable  use  nearly  double 
the  usual  quantity  from  the  same  number  of  trees. 
One  important  factor  in  this  meadow  and  pasture 
and  tree  fertility  was  probably  the  continued:  deep 
snows  of  last  winter.  About  one  hundred  inches  fell 
in  the  Hudson  Valley,  and  two  feet  at  one  fall  in 
14 


NATURE  LORE 

December.  Snow  warms  and  fertilizes.  How  it 
warmed  up  and  quickened  the  mice  beneath  it!  The 
meadows  yielded  double  their  usual  number  of 
meadow  mice.  Never  have  I  seen  in  the  spring  evi- 
dence of  such  a  crop.  Over  a  wide  area,  wherever  1 
looked  in  meadow  bottoms  or  grassy  hillsides  or 
shaven  lawns,  there  were  the  runways,  the  grassy 
nests,  the  camping-grounds  of  this  vast  army  of 
meadow  mice.  They  had  evidently  had  a  long 
picnic.  They  had  had  the  world  under  there  all  to 
themselves.  There  had  been  nothing  there  to  molest 
or  to  make  them  afraid,  —  no  fox,  no  cat,  no  owl, 
no  weasel,  no  mink,  —  and  they  had  reveled  in  their 
freedom  and  security.  One  could  read  it  all  in  the 
record  upon  the  ground:  their  straw  villages,  their 
round  tunnels  and  sunken  runways  through  the 
grass,  and  the  marks  and  refuse  everywhere,  as  of 
temporary  social  and  holiday  gatherings.  Vast  num- 
bers of  bushes  and  small  trees,  especially  of  the 
apple  order,  were  stripped  of  their  bark  to  a  height 
of  two  or  more  feet  from  the  ground.  I  even  saw  a 
thicket  of  small  young  locusts  with  stems  as  white 
as  bleached  cornstalks.  Spring  quickly  put  an  end 
to  these  winter  festivities  of  the  mice  and  compelled 
them  to  take  to  their  old  retreats  and  darkened  lives 
under  the  ground.  Evidently  the  old  mother,  in  this 
part  of  the  country  at  least,  took  good  care  of  her 
children  last  winter,  from  grass  and  tree-roots  to 
mice  and  insects. 

15 


NATURE  LORE 

In  her  subtler  physical  forces,  Nature  often  seems 
capricious  and  lawless,  probably  on  account  of  our 
limited  vision.  We  see  the  lightning  cleave  the  air 
in  one  blinding  flash  from  the  clouds  to  the  earth, 
often  shattering  a  tree  or  a  house  on  its  way  down. 
Hence  it  is  always  a  surprise  to  see  the  evidence 
that  the  thunderbolt  strikes  upward  as  well  as 
downward.  During  an  electric  storm  one  summer 
night  an  enormous  charge  of  electricity  came  up 
out  of  the  earth  under  a  maple- tree  at  the  foot  of 
the  hill  below  my  study,  scattering  the  sod,  the 
roots,  and  some  small  bushes  like  an  explosion  of 
powder  or  dynamite;  then  it  rooted  around  on  the 
ground  like  a  pig,  devouring  or  annihilating  the 
turf,  making  a  wide,  ragged,  zigzag  trench  seven  or 
eight  feet  long  down  the  hill  in  the  ground,  wrhen  it 
dived  beneath  the  wagon  track,  five  or  six  feet  wide, 
bursting  out  here  and  there  on  the  surface,  then 
escaped  out  of  the  bank  made  by  the  plough  on  the 
edge  of  the  vineyard.  Here  it  seems  to  have  leaped 
to  the  wire  trellis  of  the  grapevines,  running  along  it 
northward,  scorching  the  leaves  here  and  there, 
and  finally  vented  its  fury  on  a  bird-box  that  was 
fastened  to  a  post  at  the  end  of  the  row.  It  com- 
pletely demolished  the  box,  going  a  foot  or  more 
out  of  its  way  to  do  so.  The  box  was  not  occupied, 
so  there  was  not  the  anticlimax  of  a  bolt  of  Jove 
slaughtering  house  wrens  or  bluebirds.  Maybe  it 
was  the  nails  that  drew  the  charge  to  the  box.  But 
16 


NATURE  LORE 

why  it  was  rooting  around  down  the  hill  when  it 
came  out  of  the  ground,  instead  of  leaping  upward, 
is  a  puzzle.  It  acted  like  some  blind,  crazy  material 
body  that  did  not  know  where  to  go.  A  cannon-shot 
would  have  made  a  much  smoother  trench.  Its 
course  en  the  ground  was  about  twelve  or  fourteen 
feet,  half  above  and  half  below  ground,  and  its  leap 
in  the.  air  about  six  feet.  Strange  that  a  thing  of 
such  incredible  speed  and  power  should  yet  have 
time  to  loiter  about  and  do  such  "  fool  stunts  " ! 
This  space-annihilator  left  a  trail  like  a  slow, 
plodding  thing.  It  burrowed  like  a  mole,  it  delved 
like  a  plough,  it  leaped  and  ran  like  a  squirrel,  and 
it  struck  like  a  hammer.  A  spectator  would  have 
been  aware  only  of  d  blinding  blaze  of  fire  there 
on  the  edge  of  the  vineyard,  and  heard  a  crash  that 
would  have  stunned  him;  but  probably  could  not 
have  told  whether  the  bolt  came  upward  or  down- 
ward. Lightning  is  much  quicker  than  our  special 
senses. 

On  another  occasion,  beside  my  path  through  the 
woods  to  Slabsides,  I  saw  where  a  bolt  had  come  up 
out  of  a  chipmunk's  hole  at  the  root  of  a  tree,  scat- 
tered the  leaves  and  leaf  mould  about,  and  appar- 
ently disappeared  in  the  air. 

The  lightning  seems  to  have  its  favorite  victims 

among  the  trees.  I  have  never  known  it  to  strike  a 

beech-tree.  Hemlocks  and  pines  are  its  favorites  in 

my  woods.  In  other  regions  the  oak  and  the  ash  re- 

17 


NATURE  LOEE 

ceive  its  attention.  An  oak  on  my  father's  farm  wag 
struck  twice  in  the  course  of  many  years,  the  last 
bolt  proving  fatal.  The  hard,  or  sugar,  maple,  is 
frequently  struck,  but  only  in  one  instance  have  I 
known  the  tree  to  be  injured.  In  this  case  a  huge 
tree  was  simply  demolished.  Usually  the  bolt  comes 
down  on  the  outside  of  the  tree,  making  a  mark  as 
if  a  knife  had  clipped  off  the  outer  surfaces  of  the 
bark,  revealing  the  reddish-yellow  interior.  In  sev- 
eral cases  I  have  seen  this  effect.  But  a  few  summers 
ago  an  unusually  large  and  solid  sugar  maple  in 
my  neighbor's  woods  received  a  charge  that  simply 
reduced  it  to  stovewood.  Such  a  scene  of  utter  de- 
struction I  have  never  before  witnessed  in  the  woods. 
The  tree  was  blown  to  pieces  as  if  it  had  been  filled 
with  dynamite.  Over  a  radius  of  fifty  or  more  feet 
the  fragments  of  the  huge  trunk  lay  scattered.  It 
was  as  if  the  bolt,  baffled  so  long  by  the  rough  coat 
of  mail  of  the  maple,  had  at  last  penetrated  it  and 
had  taken  full  satisfaction.  The  explosive  force  prob- 
ably came  from  the  instantaneous  vaporization  of 
the  sap  of  the  tree  by  the  bolt. 

Some  friends  of  mine  were  inoculated  with  curi- 
osity about  insects  by  watching  the  transformation 
of  the  larvae  of  one  of  the  swallow-tailed  butterflies, 
probably  the  Papilio  asterias.  As  I  was  walking  on 
their  porch  one  morning  in  early  October  I  chanced 
to  see  a  black-and-green  caterpillar  about  two  inches 
long  posed  in  a  meditative  attitude  upon  the  side 
18 


NATURE  LORE 

of  the  house  a  foot  or  more  above  the  floor.  The  lat- 
ter half  of  its  body  was  attached  to  the  board  wall, 
and  the  fore  part  curved  up  from  it  with  bowed  head. 
The  creature  was  motionless,  and  apparently  ab- 
sorbed in  deep  meditation.  I  stooped  down  and 
examined  it  more  closely.  I  saw  that  it  was  on  the 
eve  of  a  great  change.  The  surface  of  the  board 
immediately  under  the  forward  part  of  the  body 
had  been  silvered  over  with  a  very  fine  silken  web 
that  was  almost  like  a  wash,  rather  than  something 
woven.  Anchored  to  this  on  both  sides,  as  if  grown 
out  of  the  web,,  ran  a  very  fine  thread  or  cord  up 
over  the  caterpillar's  back,  which  served  to  hold  it 
in  place;  it  could  lean  against  the  thread  as  a  sailor 
leans  against  a  rope  thrown  around  him  and  tied  to 
the  mast.  With  bowed  head  the  future  butterfly 
hung  there,  and  with  bowed  head  I  waited  and 
watched.  Presently  convulsive  movements  began 
to  traverse  its  body;  through  segment  after  seg- 
ment a  wave  of  effort  seemed  to  pass.  It  was  a  be- 
ginning of  the  travail  pains  of  transformation.  Then 
in  a  twinkling  a  slight  rent  appeared  in  the  skin  on 
the  curve  of  the  back,  revealing  the  new  light-green 
surface  underneath,  the  first  glimpse  of  the  chrys- 
alis. The  butterfly  was  being  born.  Slowly,  as  labor 
continued,  the  split  in  the  skin  extended  down  the 
back  and  over  toward  the  head  till  the  outlines 
of  the  chrysalis  became  plainly  visible.  I  was  wit- 
nessing that  marvelous  transformation  in  nature  of 
19 


NATURE  LORE 

a  worm  into  a  creature  of  a  much  higher  and  more 
attractive  order;  the  worm  mask  was  being  stripped 
off,  and  an  embryo  butterfly  revealed  to  view.  In  a 
few  minutes  the  head  and  forward  part  of  the  body 
were  free,  and  the  latter  half  was  fast  becoming  so. 

The  fine  silken  cord  over  the  back  served  its  pur- 
pose well,  holding  the  creature  in  place  while  it  lit- 
erally wriggled  out  of  its  skin,  and  when  this  feat 
was  accomplished,  holding  it  hi  position  for  its  long 
winter  sleep.  The  skin  behaved  as  if  it  were  an  in- 
terested party  in  the  enterprise;  much  better,  I  am 
sure,  than  one's  garments  would  if  one  were  to  try 
to  wriggle  out  of  them  without  using  one's  limbs. 
It  folded  back,  it  drew  together,  it  finally  became  a 
little  pellet  or  pack  of  cast-off  linen  that  clung  to 
the  tail  end  of  the  chrysalis.  To  effect  the  final 
detachment,  and  not  lose  the  grip  which  this  end 
seemed  to  have  on  the  board  beneath  it,  required  a 
good  deal  of  struggling,  probably  a  full  minute  of 
convulsive  effort  before  the  little  bundle  of  cast-off 
habiliments  let  go  and  dropped,  a  dark  pellet  the 
size  of  a  small  pea.  Then  our  insect  was  at  rest,  and 
seemed  slowly  to  contract  and  stiffen.  It  had  woven 
itself  the  silken  loop  to  hold  it  to  its  support,  and 
it  had  struggled  out  of  its  old  skin  on  its  own  initia- 
tive or  without  being  mothered  or  helped,  as  se 
many  newborn  creatures  are. 

I  did  not  have  the  pleasure  of  seeing  it  spin  the 
cord  over  the  back  which  plays  an  important  part 


NATURE  LORE 

in  the  process  of  transformation,  mechanical  part 
though  it  be;  but  a  few  days  later,  through  the 
patient  and  clear-seeing  eyes  of  my  friend  Miss 
Grace  Humphrey,  I  witnessed  this  operation  also. 
She  wrote:  — 

The  day  after  you  left  we  found  another  caterpillar, 
a  few  feet  away  from  yours.  It  had  already  made  its 
saddle-cord  and  shed  its  silken  robe  when  we  found  it, 
but  we  watched  it  change  from  gray-green  to,  not  green- 
ish-brown at  all,  but  a  grayness  matching  the  concrete  of 
the  house;  for  it  was  higher  up  than  yours,  on  the  ledge 
below  the  window,  hanging  from  the  ledge  against  the 
plaster  wall.  Its  cord,  too,  apparently  grew  thicker  just 
at  the  ends,  showing  up  more  plainly  for  a  bit;  then  like 
yours  it  dried  up  and  more  perfectly  matched  its  back- 
ground. In  neither  of  them  did  the  cord  continue  to  look 
thicker. 

The  same  day  I  found  a  third  caterpillar  under  the 
pear-tree,  the  very  same  kind,  black  with  a  wide  green 
stripe  marking  off  each  segment,  and  the  rows  of  yellow 
buttons.  I  carried  it  on  a  leaf  up  to  the  porch,  where  wo 
put  it  under  a  glass  bowl.  But  of  course  it  thought  that 
an  unfavorable  place  for  housing  itself  for  the  winter,  and 
it  would  n't  start,  though  we  kept  it  there  two  days.  At 
noon,  when  freed,  it  climbed  up  the  wall  of  the  house 
rather  near  yours  (so  they  were  photographed  together), 
and  we  held  our  breaths  to  see  if  it  would  start  building 
operations  there.  But  no.  Up  the  window-ledge  it  wormed 
its  way,  and  thence  up  and  up,  by  the  side  of  the  window, 
leaving  all  the  way  along  a  silky  thread,  and  constantly 
going  back  and  forth  with  its  head. 

Mr.  R knocked  it  down  once  to  keep  it  in  the  sun- 
light in  order  to  photograph  it,  and  it  immediately  climbed 
21 


NATURE  LORE 

up  to  the  same  spot,  all  the  time  leaving  the  white  silk 
thread.  It  kept  climbing  up  and  up  till  I  had  to  get  on  a 
chair  to  see  it,  and  once  I  lost  my  balance  and  jumped 
down,  jarring  it  so  that  I  knocked  it  to  the  floor.  But  up 
it  got,  and  climbed  up,  and  spent  the  rest  of  the  afternoon 
alternately  wriggling  about  to  find  just  the  right  place 
and  making  a  silken  background  in  one  spot.  The  next 
day  it  was  still  on  the  window-ledge.  About  eleven  o'clock 
it  disappeared,  and  I  hunted  and  hunted  before  I  found 
it  on  the  under  side  of  the  porch  railing!  It  was  busily 
making  its  network,  but  it  made  far  less  than  either  of  the 
others,  and  most  of  the  time  it  was  staying  quite  still. 
The  following  day,  about  noon,  it  made  its  cord,  anchor- 
ing that  at  one  end,  then  at  the  other,  and  going  back 
and  forth  to  strengthen  it.  When  the  cord  was  ready,  it 
put  its  head  through  (the  cord  was  made  ahead  of  it)  and 
wriggled  itself  into  the  cord;  it  wriggled  fully  as  hard  as 
when  yours  got  itself  out  of  its  striped  cover.  So  slowly 
and  carefully  it  made  its  way  into  place,  being  most 
careful  not  to  strain  the  cord.  We  watched  breathlessly. 
It  pushed  itself  so  far  through  that  it  was  about  half  and 
half,  and  then  it  had  to  wriggle  backward  till  its  head 
and  a  third  of  its  body  was  through,  and  two  thirds  not 
through;  and  wriggling  back  took  far  greater  care  than 
forward.  It  stayed  just  that  way,  all  huddled  up  for 
nearly  four  days,  when  about  eight  o'clock  in  the  morn- 
ing it  split  and  divested  itself  of  its  robe.  It  is  matching 
the  brown  woodwork  like  yours,  and  there  all  three 
are! 

The  incomparable  French  natural-historian  and 
felicitous  writer  Henri  Fabre  has  witnessed  what  I 
never  have:  he  has  seen  the  caterpillar  build  its  case 
or  cocoon.  In  the  instance  which  he  describes  it  was 

22 


NATURE  LORE 

the  small  grub  of  one  of  the  Psyches.  The  first  thing 
the  creature  did  was  to  collect  bits  of  felt  or  pith 
from  the  cast-off  garment  of  its  mother.  These  it 
tied  together  with  a  thread  of  its  own  silk,  forming 
a  band,  or  girdle,  which  it  put  around  its  own  body, 
uniting  the  ends.  This  ring  was  the  start  and  founda- 
tion of  the  sack  in  which  it  was  to  incase  itself. 
The  band  was  placed  well  forward,  so  that  the  in- 
sect could  reach  its  edge  by  bending  its  head  up  and 
down  and  around  in  all  directions.  Then  it  proceeded 
to  widen  the  girdle  by  attaching  particles  of  down 
to  its  edges.  As  the  garment  grew  toward  its  head, 
the  weaver  crept  forward  in  it,  thus  causing  it  to 
cover  more  and  more  of  its  body  till  in  a  few  hours 
it  covered  all  of  it,  and  the  sack  was  complete,  a 
very  simple  process,  and,  it  would  seem,  the  only- 
possible  one.  The  head,  with  the  flexible  neck, 
which  allowed  it  to  swing  through  the  circle,  was 
the  loom  that  did  the  weaving,  the  thread  issuing 
from  the  spinneret  on  the  lip.  Did  the  silk  issue  from 
the  other  end  of  the  body,  as  we  are  likely  to  think 
it  does,  the  feat  would  be  impossible.  I  suppose  a 
woman  might  knit  herself  into  her  sweater  in  the 
same  way  by  holding  the  ball  of  yarn  in  her  bosom 
and  turning  the  web  around  and  pulling  it  down 
instead  of  turning  her  body  —  all  but  her  arms; 
here  she  would  be  balked.  To  understand  how  a 
grub  weaves  itself  a  close-fitting  garment,  closed 
at  both  ends,  from  its  own  hair,  or  by  what  sleight 
23 


NATURE  LORE 

of  hand  it  attaches  its  cocoon  to  the  end  of  a  branch, 
I  suppose  one  would  need  to  witness  the  process. 

In  October  these  preparations  and  transforma- 
tions in  the  insect  world  are  taking  place  all  about 
us,  and  we  regard  them  not.  The  caterpillars  are 
getting  ready  for  a  sleep  out  of  which  they  awaken 
in  the  spring  totally  different  creatures.  They  tuck 
themselves  away  under  stones  or  into  crevices,  they 
hang  themselves  on  bushes,  they  roll  themselves  up 
in  dry  leaves,  and  brave  the  cold  of  winter  in  tough 
garments,  woolly  or  silky,  of  their  own  weaving. 
Some  of  them,  as  certain  of  the  large  moths,  do 
what  seems  like  an  impossible  stunt:  they  shut 
themselves  up  inside  a  tough  case,  or  receptacle, 
and  attach  it  by  a  long,  strong  bit  of  home-made 
tape  to  the  end  of  a  twig,  so  that  it  swings  freely  in 
the  wind.  I  have  seen  the  downy  woodpecker  trying 
to  break  into  one  of  these  sealed-up,  living  tombs 
without  avail.  Its  free,  pendent  position  allows  it  to 
yield  to  the  strokes  of  the  bird,  and  all  efforts  to 
penetrate  the  case  are  in  vain. 

How  the  big,  clumsy  worm,  without  help  or  hands, 
wove  itself  into  this  bird-proof  case,  and  hung  itself 
up  at  the  end  of  a  limb,  would  be  a  problem  worth 
solving.  Of  course  it  had  its  material  all  within  its 
own  body,  so  is  not  encumbered  with  outside  tools 
or  refractory  matter.  It  was  the  result  of  a  mechan- 
ical and  a  vital  process  combined.  The  creature 
knew  how  to  use  the  means  which  Nature  had  given 
24 


NATURE  LORE 

it  for  the  purpose.  Some  of  the  caterpillars  weave  the 
chrysalis-case  out  of  the  hairs  and  wool  of  their  sum- 
mer coats,  others  out  of  silk  developed  from  within. 

On  October  mornings  I  have  had  great  pleasure 
in  turning  over  the  stones  by  the  roadside  and 
lifting  up  those  on  the  tops  of  the  stone  walls  and 
noting  the  insect-life  preparing  its  winter  quarters 
under  them.  The  caterpillars  and  spiders  are  busy. 
One  could  gather  enough  of  the  white  fine  silk  from 
spider  tents  and  cocoons  to  make  a  rope  big  enough 
to  hang  himself  with'.  The  jumping  spider  may  be 
found  in  his  closely  woven  tent.  Look  at  his  head 
through  a  pocket-glass,  and  he  looks  like  a  minia- 
ture woodchuck.  His  smooth,  dark-gray,  hairy  pate 
and  two  beadlike  eyes  are  very  like;  but  his  broad, 
blunt  nose  is  unlike.  It  seems  studded  with  a  row  of 
five  or  six  jewels;  but  these  jewels  are  eyes.  What 
extra  bounty  Nature  seems  to  have  bestowed  upon 
some  of  these  humble  creatures!  We  find  our  one 
pair  of  eyes  precious;  think  what  three  or  four  pairs 
would  be  if  they  added  to  our  powers  of  vision  pro- 
portionately! But  probably  the  many-eyed  spiders 
and  the  flies  with  their  compound  eyes  see  less 
than  we  do.  This  multitude  of  eyes  seems  only  an 
awkward  device  of  Nature's  to  make  up  for  the 
movable  eye  like  our  own. 

In  some  of  the  spiders'  cocoons  under  the  stones 
on  the  tops  of  the  walls  you  will  find  masses  of  small 
pink  eggs,  expected  to  survive  the  winter,  I  suppose, 
25 


NATURE  LORE 

and  hatch  out  in  the  spring.  The  under  side  of  a 
stone  on  the  top  of  a  stone  wall  seems  like  a  very 
cold  cradle  and  nursery,  but  the  caterpillars  in  their 
shrouds  survive  here,  and  may  not  the  spiders'  eggs? 
In  October  you  will  find  the  caterpillars  in  all 
stages  of  making  ready  for  winter.  They  first  cover 
a  small  space  on  the  stone  upon  which  they  rest 
with  a  very  fine  silken  web;  it  looks  like  a  delicate 
silver  wash.  This  is  the  foundation  of  the  coming 
cocoon,  but  I  could  never  catch  any  of  them  in  the 
act  of  weaving  their  cocoons.  I  brought  one  to  the 
house  and  kept  it  under  observation  for  several 
days,  but  it  was  always  passive  whenever  I  glimpsed 
it  through  the  crack  between  the  stones.  The  nights 
were  frosty  and  the  days  chilly,  but  some  time  dur- 
ing the  twenty-four  hours  the  creature's  loom  was 
at  work.  One  morning  a  thin  veil  of  delicate  silver 
threads,  through  which  I  could  dimly  see  the  worm^ 
united  the  two  stones.  It  seemed  to  be  in  the  midst 
of  a  little  thicket  of  vertical,  shining  silken  threads. 
It  was  like  some  enchantment.  A  little  later  the 
thicket,  or  veil,  had  developed  into  a  thin  cradle  in 
which  lay  the  chrysalis  and  the  cast-off  skin  of  the 
worm.  This  caterpillar  had  been  disturbed  a  good 
deal  and  made  to  waste  some  of  its  precious  silk, 
so  that  its  cocoon  was  finally  a  thin,  poor  one.  "Life 
under  a  stone  "  forms  a  chapter  in  Nature's  infinite 
book  of  secrecy  which  most  persons  skip,  but  which 
is  well  worth  perusal. 


NEW  GLEANINGS  IN  OLD  FIELDS 

I.  LIVE  NATURAL  HISTORY 

RECENTLY,  while  reading  Thoreau's  Journal, 
I  wondered  why  his  natural  history  notes,  with 
which  the  Journal  abounds,  interested  me  so  little. 
On  reflection  I  saw  that  it  was  because  he  contented 
himself  with  making  only  a  bare  statement  of  the 
fact  —  he  did  not  relate  it  to  anything  else  or  inter- 
pret its  meaning.  There  is  a  great  deal  of  bald,  dry, 
natural  history  of  this  kind  in  his  Journal  which  he 
never  wove  together  into  a  living  texture. 

When  he  simply  tells  me,  "  I  see  a  downy  wood- 
pecker tapping  on  an  apple-tree  and  hear  when  I 
have  passed  his  sharp,  metallic  note,"  he  has  not 
interested  me  in  the  woodpecker.  He  must  string 
the  bird  on  his  thoughts  in  some  way;  he  must  re- 
late him  to  my  life  or  experience.  The  facts  of  nat- 
ural history  become  interesting  the  moment  they 
become  facts  of  human  history.  All  the  ways  of  the 
wild  creatures  in  getting  on  in  the  world  interest  us, 
because  we  have  our  ways  of  getting  on  in  the  world. 
All  their  economies,  antagonisms,  failures,  devices, 
appeal  to  us  for  the  same  reason. 

Thoreau's  description  of  the  battle  of  the  ants  in 
"Walden"  is  intensely  interesting  because  it  is  so 
27 


NEW  GLEANINGS  IN  OLD  FIELDS 

human.  Valor,  heroism,  stir  us  in  whatever  field 
they  appear. 

As  I  write,  a  little  chippie  comes  among  the  vines 
on  my  porch  looking  for  nesting-material.  The  old 
spring  impulse  to  increase  and  multiply  is  strong 
upon  her;  she  tugs  at  the  strings  that  tie  the  vines, 
she  scrutinizes  every  branch  for  some  shred  or  bit 
that  will  serve  her  purpose.  She  interests  me  and  I 
lend  her  a  hand  by  releasing  some  of  the  strings 
which  she  could  not  manage.  I  am  familiar  with  her 
problem,  as  we  all  are.  The  cliff  swallows  daintily 
gathering  mud  at  the  edges  of  a  puddle  in  the  road, 
lifting  their  wings  and  standing  on  tip-toe  as  it 
were,  to  guard  against  soiling  their  plumage,  is  a 
sight  I  always  pause  to  witness. 

Yesterday  I  sat  for  an  hour  in  the  woods  near  a 
dead  maple-stub  in  which  a  flicker  was  excavating 
her  nest.  At  intervals  the  hammering  would  cease, 
and  the  bird,  on  her  guard  against  the  approach  of 
stealthy  enemies,  would  appear  at  the  opening  and 
take  a  long  look.  Finally,  when  she  discovered  me, 
she  came  out  and  went  off  in  the  woods,  and  seemed 
to  have  some  conversation  with  her  mate. 

All  the  industries  and  ways  and  means  among  the 
animals  are  interesting.  A  chipmunk  carrying  nuts 
and  seeds  to  her  den,  a  red  squirrel  cutting  off  the 
chestnut  burrs,  too  impatient  to  wait  for  the  frost 
to  open  them  on  the  trees,  even  a  woodchuck  carry- 
ing dry  grass  and  stubble  into  his  hole  for  a  nest, 


NEW  GLEANINGS  IN  OLD  FIELDS 

arrest  the  attention.  The  currents  of  life  everywhere, 
the  lampreys  piling  up  the  stones  in  the  creek-bot- 
tom for  a  nest,  the  muskrat  in  the  fall  building  his 
aquatic  tent  with  mouthfuls  of  sedge-grass,  excite 
our  interest.  In  May  all  the  seed-eating  and  nut- 
eating  creatures  are  hard  put  to  it  to  obtain  food. 
The  red  squirrel  comes  in  front  of  my  door  and  eats 
the  sterile  catkins  of  the  butternut,  and  they  evi- 
dently help  tide  him  over  this  season  of  scarcity. 
One  morning  a  gray  squirrel  in  his  quest  for  a  break- 
fast invaded  the  tree.  The  red  squirrel  soon  spied 
him  and  hustled  him  out  of  it  very  spitefully.  The 
gray  went  undulating  along  the  top  of  the  stone 
wall,  the  picture  of  grace  and  ease,  while  the  red, 
with  tail  kinked,  was  in  hot  pursuit. 

To  find  an  interest  in  natural  history  one  must 
add  something  more  than  the  fact,  one  must  see  the 
meaning  of  the  fact. 

I  feel  no  especial  interest  in  the  kingbird  that 
alights  on  the  telephone-wire  in  front  of  me,  but 
when  he  climbs  high  up  in  the  air  and  picks  some 
invisible  insect  from  out  the  apparently  empty 
space,  and  brings  it  back  to  his  perch,  I  am  inter- 
ested. It  was  a  characteristic  act.  The  fox  is  inter- 
esting for  his  cunning,  the  skunk  and  porcupine 
for  their  stupidity.  We  see  in  the  last  two  how  the 
weapons  of  defense  which  Nature  has  so  liberally 
bestowed  upon  them  have  left  no  room  for  the  exi- 
gencies of  life  to  develop  their  wits. 
29 


NEW  GLEANINGS  IN  OLD  FIELDS 

The  novel,  the  extraordinary,  the  characteristic, 
the  significant,  always  interest  us.  The  human  bore 
is  a  person  who  has  no  conception  of  what  consti- 
tutes the  interesting;  he  or  she  pours  out  his  own 
private  experiences  upon  us  as  if  they  were  of  the 
same  interest  to  us  as  to  him.  How  prone  we  are  to 
think  our  special  ailments  are  of  universal  interest, 
but  how  rarely  is  this  the  case ! 

One  afternoon  two  cuckoos,  flying  side  by  side, 
passed  my  door.  In  the  morning  they  passed  again 
in  the  same  way  and  going  in  the  same  direction. 
I  became  interested.  I  said,  This  means  business. 
Following  the  course  they  took,  I  went  straight  to 
a  clump  of  red-thorn  trees  a  hundred  yards  distant, 
and  there  was  the  nest,  with  young  more  than  half- 
grown.  They  were  black-billed  cuckoos.  The  mother 
bird  chided  me  in  that  harsh,  guttural,  staccato  note 
of  hers,  and  kept  her  place  on  a  branch  near  the 
nest.  One  of  the  three  young  got  out  of  the  rude 
nest  and  perched  on  a  twig,  holding  its  head  or  neck 
nearly  vertical.  Its  pronounced  stubbly  quills  and 
peculiar  attitude  gave  it'  an  unbirdlike  look.  The 
cuckoos  seem  to  tune  their  nesting  with  that  of  the 
tent-caterpillars  upon  which  they  feed.  As  the  sup- 
ply of  these  orchard  pests,  and  many  other  similar 
pests,  had  been  nearly  exterminated  by  the  cold, 
wet  May  of  the  previous  year  (1917),  it  would  have 
been  very  interesting  to  know  how  the  birds  made 


NEW  GLEANINGS  IN  OLD  FIELDS 

up  for  the  deficiency  —  what  was  the  substitute. 
But  I  could  not  find  out. 

Nearly  every  cuckoo's  nest  I  have  happened  to 
find  has  been  on  a  thorn-bush.  Why  do  they  choose 
this  tree?  What  special  enemy  are  they  on  their 
guard  against?  Our  cuckoos  evidently  lay  their  eggs 
at  longer  intervals  than  the  other  birds.  In  the 
present  case  one  of  the  young  was  clearly  several 
days  older  than  its  fellows.  This  fact,  with  the  rude 
skeleton  of  a  nest,  suggests  some  reminiscence  of 
the  habits  of  the  European  cuckoo,  a  parasitical 
bird. 

The  wild  life  around  one  becomes  interesting  the 
moment  one  gets  into  the  current  of  it  and  sees  its 
characteristics  and  by-play.  The  coons  that  come 
down  off  the  mountain  into  my  orchard  for  apples 
on  the  chill  November  nights;  the  fox  that  prowls 
about  near  me  and  wakens  me  by  his  wild,  vulpine 
squall  at  two  o'clock  in  the  morning;  the  woodchucks 
burrowing  in  my  meadows  and  eating  and  tangling 
my  clover,  and  showing  sudden  terror  when  they 
spy  me  peeping  over  the  stone  wall  or  coming  with 
my  rifle;  the  chipmunk  leaving  a  mound  of  freshly 
dug  earth  conspicuous  by  the  roadside,  while  his 
entrance  to  his  den  is  deftly  concealed  under  the 
grass  or  strawberry-vines  a  few  yards  away;  the  red 
squirrel  spinning  along  the  stone  wall,  his  move- 
ments apparently  controlled  by  the  electric-like 
waves  of  energy  that  run  along  his  tail  and  impart 
31 


NEW  GLEANINGS  IN  OLD  FIELDS 

to  it  a  new  curve  or  kink  every  moment,  or  chipping 
up  my  apples  and  pears  for  the  seed,  and  snickering 
and  cachinnating  as  if  in  derision  when  I  appear 
upon  the  scene  —  how  much  there  is  in  the  lives  of 
all  these  creatures  that  we  should  find  keenly  inter- 
esting if  we  knew  how  to  get  at  it ! 

This  rainy  morning  I  saw  two  red  squirrels  make 
a  wild  dash  through  my  garden,  one  in  hot  pursuit 
of  the  other.  A  woven  wire  fence  was  in  the  way; 
the  fleeing  one  cleared  one  of  the  meshes  neatly,  but 
his  pursuer,  intent  on  his  enemy,  blundered  and 
doubled  up  against  the  obstruction  and  was  delayed 
a  moment  —  how  much  I  wanted  to  know  what  the 
mad  racing  meant,  and  how  it  resulted!  The  red 
squirrel  is  a  perky,  feather-edged  creature,  the  hot- 
test and  most  peppery  rodent  we  have  in  our  woods 
and  orchards,  every  hair  of  him  like  a  live  wire, 
and  many  of  his  movements  are  to  me  quite  unac- 
countable. 

The  search  for  the  elements  of  the  interesting  in 
nature  and  in  life,  in  persons  and  in  things  —  well, 
is  an  interesting  search. 

II.  THE  BARN  SWALLOW 

How  winsome  is  the  swallow!  How  tender  and 
pleasing  all  her  notes !  Is  it  boyhood  that  she  brings 
back  to  us  old  men  who  were  farm  boys  in  our 
youth?  We  saw  the  swallows  play  out  and  in  the 
wide-open  barn-doors  in  haying-time,  their  steel- 


NEW  GLEANINGS  IN  OLD  FIELDS 

blue  backs  and  ruddy  throats  glancing  in  the  sun, 
and  their  gentle,  unctuous  wing  gossip  falling  on  our 
ears.  Their  coarse  nests  —  mud  without,  but  feath 
ers  within  —  were  plastered  on  the  rafters  in  the 
peak,  and  when  the  young  were  out  we  saw  them 
perched  in  a  row  on  the  ridge-board,  resting  from 
their  first  flights. 

Now,  as  I  sit  within  my  barn-door  outlook,  the 
same  swallows  are  playing  before  me,  untouched  by 
the  many  long  years  that  have  passed,  giving  the 
impression  of  perpetual  youth;  the  same  tender, 
confiding  calls,  the  same  darting,  wayward  flight, 
the  same  swift  coursings  above  the  shorn  meadows; 
darlings  of  the  ripe  summer  air,  aerial  feeders, 
reaping  an  invisible  bounty  above  us,  touching  the 
earth  in  quest  of  a  straw  or  a  feather,  or  for  clay 
for  the  nest,  tireless  of  wing,  and  impotent  of  foot, 
as  of  old. 

The  swallow  has  two  words,  one  for  her  friends, 
and  one  for  her  foes,  —  "Wit,  wit,  wit,"  uttered  so 
confidingly  for  the  friends,  and  "Sleet,  sleet,  sleet," 
uttered  sharply  for  the  foes. 

Instead  of  the  ridge-board  of  my  youth,  the  swal- 
low now  has  a  new  perch,  the  telephone  and  tele- 
graph wires  strung  along  the  highway. 

Shall  we  look  upon  the  swallow  as  a  songster? 
Virgil  refers  to  him  as  such,  and  when  he  perches 
upon  the  telephone-wire  in  front  of  my  barn-door 
and  fills  and  refills  his  mouth  with  a  succession  of 


NEW  GLEANINGS  IN  OLD  FIELDS 

those  squeaking,  smacking,  unctuous  notes,  his 
throat  swelling  and  throbbing,  his  beak  opening  and 
shutting,  glancing  now  to  the  right,  now  to  the  left, 
as  if  to  see  if  his  mate  is  near,  he  looks,  and  we  may 
say  is,  the  songster  that  Virgil  called  him.  The 
performance  lacks  resonance  and  the  fluty  quality 
of  our  regular  song-birds;  it  seems  to  be  made  in  the 
cheeks  or  by  the  softer  parts  of  the  mouth.  The 
beak  is  too  small  and  feeble  to  play  much  of  a  part 
in  its  production.  What  a  waxy,  adhesive  sort  of  a 
sound  it  is !  I  wonder  if  the  swallow  has  the  organ 
called  the  syrinx  common  to  the  regular  song-birds. 
If  one  may  compare  sound  with  substance  I  should 
say  that  the  swallow's  strain  seems  viscous  and 
turbid  rather  than  liquid  and  translucent  like  that 
of  the  acknowledged  song-birds.  It  is  less  a  musical 
performance  for  its  own  sake 'than  a  note  of  self- 
congratulation,  or  of  salutation  to  its  fellows.  The 
bird  does  not  lift  up  his  head  and  pour  out  his  strain 
as  if  for  the  joy  of  singing;  he  delivers  it  as  a 
speaker  delivers  his  discourse,  looking  about  him 
and  laying  the  emphasis  here  and  there  in  a  con- 
fident and  reassuring  tone. 

The  cliff  swallows  and  the  purple  martins  and  bank 
swallows  are  much  more  social  and  gregarious  than 
the  barn  swallows.  I  do  not  remember  ever  to  have 
seen  more  than  one  nest  of  the  latter  at  a  time  in 
the  peak  of  the  barn,  though  I  am  told  that  in  New 
England  they  nest  in  colonies.  I  do  not  know  that 
34 


NEW  GLEANINGS  IN  OLD  FIELDS 

they  migrate  in  large  flocks  like  the  other  swallows. 
I  only  know  that  their  season  with  us  ends  about 
the  20th  of  August,  and  that  they  pass  the  winter  in 
South  America,  where  I  hope  they  have  as  happy  a 
time  as  they  do  here.  If  anything  preys  upon  them 
while  they  are  here  I  do  not  know  what  it  is.  They 
could  laugh  at  the  swiftest  hawk.  They  share  the 
distrust  of  all  birds  toward  the  cat,  though  I  have 
never  known  Puss  to  catch  one.  They  will  swoop 
down  spitefully  if  she  lingers  about  their  haunts, 
and  I  have  seen  her  try  to  strike  them  with  her  paw, 
but  have  never  known  her  to  succeed. 

My  swallows  have  a  pretty  habit,  when  the  day 
is  chilly  and  cloudy  or  stormy,  of  collecting  their 
brood  on  the  little  ledges  or  shelves  above  the  win- 
dows on  the  south  gable  of  the  house  and  feeding 
them  there.  The  young  sit  there  in  a  huddled  row, 
apparently  looking  off  in  the  fields  of  air  where  their 
parents  are  coursing  for  insects,  and  when  they  see 
them  returning,  they  break  out  in  a  happy  and 
grateful  chatter.  The  old  weather-worn  gable  is  for 
the  moment  the  scene  of  a  very  pleasing  and  ani- 
mated incident  in  swallow  life. 

III.  INSECTS 

One  reason  why  all  truthful  and  well-written 
books  upon  insects  interest  us  more  than  the  sub- 
ject would  seem  to  warrant  is  that  no  creature  is 
small  in  print,  or  in  a  book.  Print  is  the  great  equal- 
35 


NEW  GLEANINGS  IN  OLD  FIELDS 

izer;  it  magnifies  the  little  and  it  minimizes  the  big. 
When  Fabre  focuses  our  attention  upon  a  wasp  or 
a  spider,  his  account  engrosses  our  minds  as  com- 
pletely as  an  account  of  a  lion  or  an  elephant  would; 
the  insect  is  singled  out  and  separated  from  the 
thousand  forms  and  entanglements  that  belittle  it 
in  field  and  wood;  it  alone  occupies  the  page.  The 
lion  can  do  no  more.  It  is  precisely  like  putting  the 
flea  under  the  microscope.  The  wars,  loves,  indus- 
tries, activities  of  Fabre's  little  people  are  de- 
scribed in  terms  and  images  which  we  use  in  giving 
an  account  of  man  and  the  greater  beasts.  The 
words  make  them  big.  A  moment  ago  a  minute  red 
insect,  a  mere  moving  point,  revealed  itself  to  my 
eye,  crawling  across  this  sheet  of  paper.  It  was  so 
frail  and  small  that  a  bare  touch  of  my  finger,  as 
my  pocket-glass  showed,  crushed  it.  If  I  could  give 
you  its  life  history,  and  show  its  relation  to  other 
insects,  it  would  stand  out  on  my  page  as  distinctly 
as  if  it  had  been  a  thousand  times  larger:  its  travels, 
its  adventures,  its  birth,  its  death,  would  fill  the 
mind's  eye;  the  reader  would  not  have  to  grope  for  it 
on  my  page,  as  my  eye  did  when  it  discovered  it. 

There  is  no  little  and  no  big  to  nature,  and  there 
is  none  to  the  mind.  We  think  of  the  whirling  solar 
system  as  easily  as  of  a  whirling  top.  The  space  that 
separates  us  from  the  fixed  stars  is  no  more  to  the 
mind  than  the  space  that  separates  us  from  our 
neighbors.  In  like  manner  the  atoms  and  the  mole- 


NEW  GLEANINGS  IN  OLD  FIELDS 

cules  of  matter,  when  we  have  once  conceived  of 
them,  are  as  easy  of  apprehension  as  are  the  rocks 
and  the  mountains.  The  theory  of  their  nature  and 
activities  figures  as  large  in  our  minds  as  that  of  the 
planetary  systems.  The  stories  of  many  of  Fabre's 
flies  and  beetles  interest  us  as  much,  and  are  quite 
as  significant,  as  the  story  of  Jack  the  Giant-Killer 
or  of  Robinson  Crusoe.  His  history  of  the  tumble- 
bug  amuses  and  interests  us  as  much  as  that  of  any 
of  Plutarch's  heroes.  But  see  the  tumblebug  there 
in  the  path  or  by  the  roadside,  struggling  with  his 
little  black  globe,  and  he  is  little  more  than  the 
microscopic  spider  on  my  sheet  of  paper.  His  his- 
tory must  be  written  large,  magnified  by  printer's 
type,  before  it  comes  fully  within  our  ken  or  has 
power  to  move  us. 

Fabre's  excursions  afield  are  as  entertaining  and 
suggestive  as  Roosevelt's  excursions  into  the  big- 
game  lands  of  Africa.  With  the  true  artist  size  does 
not  count.  The  same  is  true  of  all  the  minutiae  of 
nature  —  flowers,  insects,  birds,  fishes,  frogs.  We 
are  bound  to  magnify  them  by  describing  them  in 
the  terms  of  our  experience  with  larger  bodies. 

A  wasp  will  capture  its  prey,  paralyze  it,  and  leave 
it  upon  the  ground  and  then  go  a  few  yards  away 
and  dig  its  hole.  Then  it  will  come  back,  look  its 
game  over,  take  its  measure,  and  apparently  con- 
clude that  the  hole  is  too  small,  then  go  back  and 
enlarge  it,  sometimes  making  several  trips  of  this 
37 


NEW  GLEANINGS  IN  OLD  FIELDS 

kind.  Its  attitudes  and  procedure  would  lead  you 
to  say  that  the  wasp  was  thinking  and  calculating 
as  a  mechanic  would  under  similar  circumstances. 
In  another  case  the  Sphex  wasp  has  need  to  para- 
lyze the  mouth-parts  of  the  prey  she  is  carrying,  so, 
as  she  bestrides  it  and  drags  it  also  by  its  antennae, 
it  cannot  grip  her  with  its  mandibles  or  impede  her 
progress  by  seizing  upon  blades  of  grass  by  the  way. 
Like  a  skillful  surgeon,  the  wasp  knows  just  what 
to  do,  knows  in  what  part  of  the  head  to  insert  her 
sting  to  produce  the  desired  effect. 

"To  know  everything  and  to  know  nothing," 
says  Fabre,  "according  as  it  acts  under  normal  or 
exceptional  conditions :  that  is  the  strange  antithesis 
presented  by  the  insect  race." 

But  we  must  never  credit  the  insect  with  under- 
standing as  the  result  of  cogitation;  it  knows  noth- 
ing; its  life  is  a  series  of  acts  fatally  linked  together. 
The  mind  of  the  insect  is  the  mind  of  Nature;  it  is 
action  and  not  reflection.  The  plant  does  not  con- 
sciously select  the  elements  in  the  soil  or  the  air 
that  it  needs,  as  we  select;  the  vital  chemistry  in 
the  organism  does  the  selecting.  But  the  moment 
we  name  what  it  is  that  does  the  selecting,  we  are 
caught  in  a  trap  —  we  want  to  know  what  prompted 
it  to  the  act.  We  cannot  find  the  under  side  of  these 
things,  because  there  is  no  under  side,  or  upper  side 
either,  any  more  than  there  is  to  the  earth. 


NEW  GLEANINGS  IN  OLD  FIELDS 

IV.  THE  DOG 

The  most  wonderful  thing  about  the  dog  is  not 
his  intelligence,  but  his  capacity  for  loving.  We  can 
call  it  by  no  other  name.  The  more  you  love  your 
dog,  the  more  your  dog  loves  you.  You  can  win  your 
neighbor's  dog  any  time  by  loving  him  more  than 
your  neighbor  does.  He  will  follow  you  to  the  ends 
of  the  earth  if  you  love  him  enough.  He  may  become 
so  attached  to  you  that  he  fairly  divines  your 
thoughts,  not  through  his  own  power  of  thought, 
but  through  his  intense  sympathy  and  the  free- 
masonry of  love. 

He  is  the  ideal  companion  because  he  gives  you 
a  sense  of  companionship  without  disturbing  your 
sense  of  solitude.  Your  mind  is  alone,  but  your  heart 
has  company.  He  is  below  your  horizon,  but  some- 
thing comes  up  from  his  life  that  mingles  with  your 
own.  This  friend  walks  with  you,  or  sits  with  you, 
and  yet  he  does  not  come  between  you  and  your 
book,  or  between  you  and  the  holiday  spirit  you 
went  out  to  woo.  He  is  the  visible  embodiment  of 
the  holiday  spirit;  he  shows  you  how  to  leave  dull 
care  behind;  he  goes  forth  with  you  in  the  spirit  of 
eternal  youth,  sure  that  something  beautiful  or  curi- 
ous or  adventurous  will  happen  at  any  turn  of  the 
road.  He  finds  no  places  dull,  he  is  alert  with  expect- 
ancy every  moment. 

In  him  you  have  good-fellowship,  always  on  tap, 


NEW  GLEANINGS  IN  OLD  FIELDS 

as  it  were.  Say  the  word,  and  he  bounds  to  your 
side,  or  leads  the  way  to  the  woods. 

My  dog  enjoys  a  walk  more  than  I  do;  his  nature- 
study  is  quite  as  real  as  mine  is,  though  of  a  totally 
different  kind;  the  sense  of  smell  that  plays  such 
a  part  in  his  excursions,  plays  little  or  none  in  mine, 
and  the  eye  and  the  mind,  which  contribute  so  much 
to  my  enjoyment,  are  almost  a  blank  with  him. 
He  enjoys  the  open  fire,  too,  and  a  warm,  soft  bed, 
and  a  good  dinner.  All  his  purely  animal  enjoy- 
ments are  as  keen  or  keener  than  mine,  but  has  he 
any  other? 

How  different  his  interest  in  cats  is  from  mine, 
and  in  dogs,  and  in  men !  He  is  not  interested  in  the 
landscape  as  a  whole :  I  doubt  very  much  if  he  sees 
it  at  all;  but  he  is  interested  hi  what  the  landscape 
holds  for  him  —  the  woodchuck-hole,  or  the  squir- 
rel's den,  or  the  fox's  trail.  His  life  is  entirely  the 
life  of  the  senses,  and  on  this  ground  we  meet  and 
are  boon  companions. 

If  he  has  any  mind-life,  and  ideas,  if  he  ever  looks 
back  over  the  past,  or  forward  into  the  future,  I  see 
no  evidence  of  it.  When  there  is  nothing  doing  he 
sleeps;  apparently  he  could  sleep  all  the  time,  if 
there  were  nothing  better  going  on. 

v.  WOOD  WAIFS 

Those  little  waifs  from  the  woods  —  chickadees, 
nuthatches,  downy  woodpeckers,  and  brown  creep- 
40 


NEW  GLEANINGS  IN  OLD  FIELDS 

ers  —  that  come  in  winter  and  feed  on  the  suet  on 
the  maple  in  front  of  my  window,  how  much  com- 
pany they  are  to  me!  What  thoughts  and  associa- 
tions they  bring  with  them!  What  a  pleasure  to 
have  them  as  my  guests  on  the  old  tree!  The  cold, 
naked,  snow-choked  woods  —  what  can  those  little 
pilgrims  get  there?  I  think  the  nuthatch  touches  me 
the  most  closely;  he  is  pretty  to  look  upon,  and  his 
voice  is  that  of  a  child,  soft,  confiding,  contented,  and 
his  ways  are  all  ways  of  prettiness  —  his  sliding  up 
and  down  and  round  the  tree,  his  pose,  with  head 
standing  out  at  right  angles  to  the  body,  which  en- 
ables him  to  see  the  approach  of  danger  as  readily 
as  if  he  were  perched  on  a  horizontal  limb,  his 
pretty  habit  of  making  a  vise  of  a  crevice  in  the  bark 
to  hold  a  nut.  All  his  notes  and  calls  are  pleasing; 
he  is  incapable  of  a  harsh  sound.  His  call  in  the 
spring  woods  when  we  made  maple  sugar  in  my  boy- 
hood —  "yank,  yank,  yank"  —  how  it  comes  back 
to  me!  Not  a  song,  but  a  token  —  the  spirit  of  the 
leafless  maple-woods  finding  a  voice. 

And  now  for  two  or  three  weeks  I  have  had  an- 
other guest  at  the  free-lunch  table,  the  prettiest 
of  them  all,  the  red-breasted  nuthatch  from  the 
North,  and  he  so  appreciates  my  bounty  that  he 
has  taken  up  his  temporary  abode  here  in  a  wren's 
box  a  few  yards  from  the  lunch-table.  One  cold  day 
I  saw  him  go  into  the  box  and  remain  for  some  time. 
So  at  sundown  I  went  and  rapped  on  his  retreat,  and 
41 


NEW  GLEANINGS  IN  OLD  FIELDS 

out  he  came.  He  spends  nearly  half  his  time  at  the 
suet  lunch.  How  pretty  he  is!  and  as  spry  as  a 
cricket;  about  two  thirds  the  size  of  the  white- 
breasted,  he  is  quicker  in  his  movements.  He  glides 
round  the  old  tree  like  a  spirit.  He  does  not  seem 
to  have  the  extra  joint  in  his  neck  that  his  larger 
cousin  has;  he  does  not  point  his  bill  straight  out 
from  the  tree  at  right  angles  to  it,  but  turns  his  head 
more  from  side  to  side.  I  call  him  my  baby  bird,  he 
is  so  suggestive  of  babyhood.  It  is  amusing  to  see 
him  come  down  upon  a  fragment  of  hickory-nut 
when  he  has  wedged  it  into  the  bark.  Each  blow  is 
seconded  by  a  flash  of  his  wings,  as  if  the  tiny  wings 
reinforced  the  head.  One  day  I  put  out  a  handful  of 
cracked  hickory-nuts,  and  he  hustled  them  all  away 
as  fast  as  he  could  carry  them,  hiding  them  here  and 
there,  in  the  vineyard,  in  the  summer-house,  on  the 
woodpile,  whether  with  a  view  to  hoarding  them  for 
future  use,  or  whether  in  obedience  to  some  blind 
natural  instinct,  I  know  not.  The  white-breasted 
does  the  same  thing,  but  I  never  see  either  of  them 
looking  up  their  hidden  stores. 

Two  downy  woodpeckers,  male  and  female,  but 
evidently  not  mated  at  this  season,  come  many 
times  a  day.  The  male  is  a  savage  little  despot;  no 
other  bird  shall  dine  while  he  does.  He  bosses  the 
female,  the  female  bosses  the  big  nuthatch,  the  nut- 
hatch bosses  the  red-breast,  the  red-breast  bosses 
the  chickadees,  the  chickadees  boss  the  brown 
42 


NEW  GLEANINGS  IN  OLD  FIELDS 

creeper  and  the  juncos.  Not  one  bird  is  hospitable 
to  another.  Each  seems  to  look  upon  the  suet  as  its 
special  find. 

The  more  inclement  the  season,  the  more  our 
sympathy  goes  out  to  our  little  wild  neighbors  who 
face  it  and  survive  it.  The  tracks  of  the  mice  and 
the  squirrels  in  the  winter  woods  have  an  interest 
for  one  they  could  not  possibly  have  in  summer  were 
they  visible  then.  O  frost  and  snow,  where  is  your 
victory?  O  white  and  barren  solitude,  thou  art  not 
all-potent!  How  distinctly  I  remember  where  our 
schoolboy  path  through  the  woods  crossed  an  old 
bush  fence,  and  the  fresh  prints  in  the  snow  of  the 
feet  of  the  red  and  gray  squirrels  to  whom  the  old 
fence  served  as  a  highway.  Those  sharp,  nervous, 
hurried  tracks  and  the  silent,  snow-choked  woods, 
—  silent  except  when  the  frost  pistols  snapped  now 
and  then,  —  how  vivid  the  picture  of  it  all  is  in  my 
memory! 

t  The  delicate  tracks  of  the  wood  mice  and  their 
tunnels  up  through  the  snow  here  and  there  beside 
our  path  —  they  are  still  unfaded  in  my  mind,  after 
a  lapse  of  more  than  seventy  years.  Occasionally  the 
stealthy  track  of  a  red  fox  would  cross  our  trail  both 
in  field  and  wood  —  never  hurried  like  that  of  the 
mice  and  the  squirrels  and  the  hares,  but  slow  — 
a  watchful,  listening  walker  in  the  midnight  winter 
solitude. 

Wild  life  in  winter  is  like  black  print  on  a  white 
43 


NEW  GLEANINGS  IN  OLD  FIELDS 

page  —  he  who  runs  may  read.  In  summer  it  is 
print  on  a  green  or  brown  or  gray  page.  The  little 
waifs  from  the  woods  that  come  to  my  door  day 
after  day  in  winter,  so  active  and  cheery  and  brave- 
hearted,  —  heroic  little  figures  that  ask  no  favors 
of  me  or  any  one,  yet  who  complacently  help  them- 
selves to  the  proffered  suet  and  nuts,  and  go  their 
way  like  a  merry  gypsy  band,  —  they  little  know 
that  they  are  my  benefactors  as  much  as  I  am 
theirs. 

VI.  AN  INTERESTING  PLANT 

In  our  walks  we  note  the  most  showy  and  beau- 
tiful flowers,  but  not  always  the  most  interesting. 
Who,  for  instance,  pauses  to  consider  that  early 
species  of  everlasting,  called  in  the  botany  Anten- 
naria,  that  grows  nearly  everywhere  by  the  roadside 
and  about  poor  fields?  It  begins  to  be  noticeable  in 
May,  its  whitish  downy  appearance,  its  groups  of 
slender  stalks  crowned  with  a  corymb  of  paperlike 
buds,  contrasting  with  the  fresh  green  of  surround- 
ing grass  or  weeds.  It  is  a  member  of  a  very  large 
family,  the  Composite,  and  does  not  attract  one 
by  its  beauty,  but  it  is  interesting  because  of  its 
many  curious  traits  and  habits.  For  instance,  it  is 
dioecious,  that  is  the  two  sexes  are  represented  by 
separate  plants;  and  what  is  more  curious,  these 
plants  are  usually  found  separated  from  each  other 
in  well-defined  groups,  like  the  men  and  women  in 
44 


NEW  GLEANINGS  IN  OLD  FIELDS 

an  old-fashioned  country  church.  Always  in  groups, 
here  a  group  of  females,  there  a  few  yards  away  a 
group  of  males.  The  females  may  be  known  by  their 
more  slender  and  graceful  appearance  and,  as  the 
season  advances,  by  their  outstripping  the  males 
in  growth.  Indeed,  they  become  real  amazons  in 
comparison  with  their  brothers.  The  stanainate,  or 
male,  plants  grow  but  a  few  inches  high;  the  heads 
are  round  and  have  a  more  dusky  or  freckled  ap- 
pearance than  do  the  pistillate;  and  as  soon  as  they 
have  shed  their  pollen  their  work  is  done,  they  are  of 
no  further  use,  and,  by  the  middle  of  May  or  before, 
their  heads  droop,  their  stalks  wither,  and  their  gen- 
eral collapse  sets  in.  Then  the  other  sex,  or  pistillate 
plants,  seem  to  have  taken  a  new  lease  of  life;  they 
wax  strong,  they  shoot  up  with  the  growing  grass 
and  keep  their  heads  above  it;  they  are  alert  and 
active,  they  bend  in  the  breeze,  their  long,  tapering 
flower-heads  take  on  a  tinge  of  color,  and  life  seems 
full  of  purpose  and  enjoyment  with  them.  I  have 
discovered,  too,  that  they  are  real  sun- worshipers; 
that  they  turn  their  faces  to  the  east  in  the  morning 
and  follow  the  sun  in  his  course  across  the  sky  till 
they  all  bend  to  the  west  at  his  going  down.  On  the 
other  hand,  their  brothers  have  stood  stiff  and 
stupid  and  unresponsive  to  any  influence  of  sky 
or  air  so  far  as  I  could  see,  till  they  drooped  and 
died. 

Another  curious  thing  is  that  the  females  seem 
•45 


NEW  GLEANINGS  IN  OLD  FIELDS 

vastly  more  numerous  —  I  should  say  almost  ten 
times  as  abundant.  You  have  to  hunt  for  the  males; 
the  others  you  see  afar  off.  In  my  usual  five-minute 
morning  walk  to  the  post-office  I  pass  several 
groups  or  circles  of  females  in  the  grass  by  the  road- 
side. I  note  how  they  grow  and  turn  their  faces  sun- 
ward. I  observe  how  alert  and  vigorous  they  are 
and  what  a  purplish  tinge  comes  over  their  mammae- 
shaped  flower-heads,  as  June  approaches.  I  looked 
for  the  males;  to  the  east,  west,  south,  none  could  be 
found  for  hundreds  of  yards.  On  the  north,  about 
two  hundred  feet  away,  I  found  a  small  colony  of 
meek  and  lonely  males.  I  wondered  by  what  agency 
fertilization  would  take  place,  by  insects  or  by  the 
wind.  I  suspected  it  would  not  take  place,  no  insects 
seemed  to  visit  the  flowers,  and  the  wind  surely 
could  not  be  relied  upon  to  hit  the  mark  so  far  off, 
and  from  such  an  unlikely  corner  too.  But  by  some 
means  the  vitalizing  dust  seemed  to  have  been  con- 
veyed. Early  in  June  the  plants  began  to  shed  their 
down,  or  seed-bearing  pappus,  still  carrying  their 
heads  at  the  top  of  the  grass,  so  that  the  breezes 
could  have  free  access  to  them  and  sow  the  seeds 
far  and  wide. 

As  the  seeds  are  sown  broadcast  by  the  wind,  I  was 
at  first  puzzled  to  know  how  the  two  sexes  were 
kept  separate,  and  always  in  little  communities, 
till  I  perceived  what  I  might  have  read  in  the  bot- 
any, that  the  plant  is  perennial  and  spreads  by 
46 


NEW  GLEANINGS  IN  OLD  FIELDS 

offsets  and  runners  like  the  strawberry.  This  would, 
of  course,  keep  the  two  kinds  in  groups  by  them- 
selves. 

VII.  NATURE  NEAR  HOME 

After  long  experience  I  am  convinced  that  the 
best  place  to  study  nature  is  at  one's  own  home, 
—  on  the  farm,  in  the  mountains,  on  the  plains, 
by  the  sea,  —  no  matter  where  that  may  be.  One 
has  it  all  about  him  then.  The  seasons  bring  to  his 
door  the  great  revolving  cycle  of  wild  life,  floral 
and  faunal,  and  he  need  miss  no  part  of  the  show. 

At  home  one  should  see  and  hear  with  more  fond- 
ness and  sympathy.  Nature  should  touch  him  a  little 
more  closely  there  than  anywhere  else.  He  is  better 
attuned  to  it  than  to  strange  scenes.  The  birds 
about  his  own  door  are  his  birds,  the  flowers  in  his 
own  fields  and  wood  are  his,  the  rainbow  springs  its 
magic  arch  across  his  valley,  even  the  everlasting 
stars  to  which  one  lifts  his  eye,  night  after  night, 
and  year  after  year,  from  his  own  doorstep,  have 
something  private  and  personal  about  them.  The 
clouds  and  the  sunsets  one  sees  in  strange  lands 
move  one  the  more  they  are  like  the  clouds  and  sun- 
sets one  has  become  familiar  with  at  home.  The 
wild  creatures  about  you  become  known  to  you  as 
they  cannot  be  known  to  a  passer-by.  The  traveler 
sees  little  of  Nature  that  is  revealed  to  the  home- 
stayer.  You  will  find  she  has  made  her  home  where 
47 


NEW  GLEANINGS  IN  OLD  FIELDS 

you  have  made  yours,  and  intimacy  with  her  there 
becomes  easy.  Familiarity  with  things  about  one 
should  not  dull  the  edge  of  curiosity  or  interest. 
The  walk  you  take  to-day  through  the  fields  and 
woods,  or  along  the  river-bank,  is  the  walk  you 
should  take  to-morrow,  and  next  day,  and  next. 
What  you  miss  once,  you  will  hit  upon  next  time. 
The  happenings  are  at  intervals  and  are  irregular. 
The  play  of  Nature  has  no  fixed  programme.  If  she 
is  not  at  home  to-day,  or  is  in  a  non-committal 
mood,  call  to-morrow,  or  next  week.  It  is  only  when 
the  wild  creatures  are  at  home,  where  their  nests  or 
dens  are  made,  that  their  characteristics  come  out. 
If  you  would  study  the  winter  birds,  for  instance, 
you  need  not  go  to  the  winter  woods  to  do  so;  you 
can  bring  them  to  your  own  door.  A  piece  of  suet 
on  a  tree  in  front  of  your  window  will  bring  chicka- 
dees, nuthatches,  downy  woodpeckers,  brown  creep- 
ers, and  often  juncos.  And  what  interest  you  will 
take  in  these  little  waifs  from  the  winter  woods  that 
daily  or  hourly  seek  the  bounty  you  prepare  for 
them !  It  is  not  till  they  have  visited  you  for  weeks 
that  you  begin  to  appreciate  the  bit  of  warmth  and 
life  they  have  added  to  your  winter  outlook.  The 
old  tree-trunk  then  wears  a  more  friendly  aspect. 
The  great  inhospitable  out-of-doors  is  relenting  a 
little;  the  cold  and  the  snow  have  found  their 
match,  and  it  warms  your  heart  to  think  that  you 
can  help  these  brave  little  feathered  people  to  win 
48 


NEW  GLEANINGS  IN  OLD  FIELDS 

the  fight.  Not  a  bit  daunted  are  they  at  the  fearful 
odds  against  them;  the  woods  and  groves  seem  as 
barren  as  deserts,  the  earth  is  piled  with  snow,  the 
trees  snap  with  the  cold  —  no  stores,  no  warmth 
anywhere,  yet  here  are 

"these  atoms  in  full  breath 
Hurling  defiance  at  vast  death." 

They  are  as  cheery  and  active  as  if  on  a  summer 
holiday. 

The  birds  are  sure  to  find  the  tidbit  you  put  out 
for  them  on  the  tree  in  front  of  your  window,  be- 
cause, sooner  or  later,  at  this  season,  they  visit 
every  tree.  The  picking  is  very  poor  and  they  work 
their  territory  over  and  over  thoroughly.  No  tree 
in  field  or  grove  or  orchard  escapes  them.  The  won- 
der is  that  in  such  a  desert  as  the  trees  appear  to  be 
in  winter,  in  both  wood  and  field,  these  little  adven- 
turers can  subsist  at  all.  They  reap  a,  to  us,  invisible 
harvest,  but  the  rough  dry  bark  of  the  trees  is  not 
such  a  barren  waste  as  it  seems.  The  amount  of  ani- 
mal food  in  the  shape  of  minute  insects,  eggs,  and 
larvae  tucked  away  in  cracks  and  crevices  must  be 
considerable,  and,  by  dint  of  incessant  peeping  and 
prying  into  every  seam  and  break  in  the  bark,  they 
get  fuel  enough  to  keep  their  delicate  machinery 
going. 

The  brown  creeper,  with  his  long,  slender,  de- 
curved  bill,  secures  what  the  chickadee,  with  his 
49 


NEW  GLEANINGS  IN  OLD  FIELDS 

short,  straight  bill,  fails  to  get.  The  creeper  works 
the  trunk  of  the  tree  from  the  ground  up  in  straight 
or  in  spiral  lines,  disappearing  quickly  round  the 
trunk  if  he  scents  danger.  He  is  more  assimilatively 
colored  than  any  of  his  winter  congeners,  being  like 
a  bit  of  animated  bark  itself  in  form  and  color,  hence 
his  range  and  movements  are  more  limited  and  rigid 
than  those  of  the  woodpeckers  and  chickadees.  The 
creeper  is  emphatically  a  tree-trunk  bird.  His  ene- 
mies are  shrikes  and  hawks,  and  the  quickness  with 
which  he  will  dart  around  the  trunk  or  flash  away 
to  another  trunk  shows  what  the  struggle  for  life 
has  taught  his  race. 

The  range  of  the  nuthatch  is  greater  than  that  of 
the  creeper,  in  that  he  takes  in  more  of  the  branches  of 
the  tree.  He  is  quite  conspicuously  colored  in  his  suit 
of  black,  light  gray,  blue,  and  white,  and  his  power 
of  movement  is  correspondingly  varied.  His  bill  is 
straight  and  heavier,  and  has  an  upward  slant  with 
the  angle  of  the  face  that  must  serve  him  some  useful 
purpose.  He  navigates  the  tree-trunks  up  and  down 
and  around,  always  keeping  an  eye  on  every  source 
of  danger  in  the  air  about  him.  I  have  never  seen 
a  nuthatch  molested  or  threatened  by  any  bird  of 
prey,  but  his  habitual  attitude  of  watchfulness  while 
exploring  the  tree-trunks,  with  head  bent  back  and 
beak  pointing  out  at  right  angles,  shows  clearly  what 
the  experience  of  his  race  has  taught  him.  Danger 
evidently  lurks  in  that  direction,  and  black  and 
50 


NEW  GLEANINGS  IN  OLD  FIELDS 

white  and  blue  are  revealing  colors  in  the  neutral 
woods.  But,  however  much  the  nuthatch  may  be 
handicapped  by  its  coloration,  it  far  outstrips  the 
creeper  in  range  and  numbers.  Its  varied  diet  of  nuts 
and  insects  no  doubt  gives  it  a  more  vigorous  con- 
stitution, and  makes  it  more  adaptive.  It  is  the 
vehicle  of  more  natural  life  and  energy. 

How  winter  emphasizes  the  movements  of  wild 
life !  The  snow  and  the  cold  are  the  white  paper  upon 
which  the  print  is  revealed.  A  track  of  a  mouse,  a 
bird,  a  squirrel,  or  a  fox  shows  us  at  a  glance  how 
the  warm  pulse  of  life  defies  the  embargo  of  winter. 
From  cracks  and  rents  in  the  frigid  zone  which 
creep  down  upon  us  at  this  season  there  issue  tiny 
jets  of  warm  life  which  play  about  here  and  there 
as  if  in  the  heyday  of  summer.  The  woods  snap  and 
explode  with  the  frost,  the  ground  is  choked  with 
snow,  no  sign  of  food  is  there  for  bird  or  beast,  and 
yet  here  are  these  tiny  bundles  of  cheer  and  con- 
tentment in  feathers  —  the  chickadees,  the  nut- 
hatches, and  their  fellows. 


EACH  AFTER  ITS  KIND 

HOW  sharply  most  forms  of  life  are  differenti- 
ated! The  die  that  stamps  each  of  them  is 
deeply  and  clearly  cut.  As  I  sit  here  in  my  bush 
camp  under  the  apple-trees,  I  see  a  chipmunk  spin- 
ning up  the  stone  wall  a  few  yards  away.  His  alert 
eye  spies  me,  and  he  pauses,  sits  up  a  few  moments, 
washes  his  face  with  that  hurried  movement  of  his 
paws  over  it,  then  hesitates,  turns,  and  goes  spin- 
ning back  down  the  stone  fence.  He  seems  to  sniff 
danger  in  me.  He  is  living  his  life,  he  has  a  distinct 
sphere  of  activity;  in  this  broad,  rolling  landscape 
he  is  a  little  jet  of  vital  energy  that  has  a  character 
and  a  purpose  of  its  own;  it  is  unlike  any  other.  How 
unlike  the  woodchuck  in  the  next  field,  creeping 
about  the  meadow,  storing  up  his  winter  fuel  as  fat 
in  his  own  flabby  body,  or  the  woodpecker  on  the 
apple-tree,  or  the  noisy  crow  flying  by  overhead! 
Each  is  a  manifestation  of  the  psychic  principle  in 
organic  nature,  but  each  is  an  individual  expression 
of  it.  The  chemistry  and  the  physics  of  their  lives 
are  the  same,  but  how  different  the  impressions 
they  severally  make  upon  us !  Life  is  infinitely  vari- 
ous in  its  forms  and  activities,  though  living  things 
all  be  made  of  one  stuff. 

52 


EACH  AFTER  ITS  KIND 

Soon  after  the  chipmunk  there  appears  a  red 
squirrel  going  down  the  wall  —  half-brother  to  the 
chipmunk  but  keyed  to  a  much  higher  degree  of 
intensity.  He  moves  in  spasms  and  sallies  and  is 
frisky  and  impish,  where  the  chipmunk  is  sedate 
and  timid.  His  arboreal  life  requires  different  qual- 
ities and  powers;  he  rushes  through  the  tree-tops 
like  a  rocket ;  he  travels  on  bridges  of  air ;  he  is  nearly 
as  much  at  home  amid  the  branches  as  are  the  birds, 
much  more  so  than  is  the  flying  squirrel,  which  has 
but  one  trick,  while  the  red  squirrel  has  a  dozen. 
That  facile  tail,  now  a  cockade,  now  a  shield,  now  an 
air-buoy;  that  mocking  dance,  those  derisive  snick- 
ers and  explosions ;  those  electric  spurts  and  dashes 
—  what  a  character  he  is  —  the  very  Puck  of  the 
woods ! 

Yesterday  a  gray  squirrel  came  down  the  wall 
from  the  mountain  —  a  long,  softly  undulating  line 
of  silver-gray;  unhurried,  alert,  but  not  nervous, 
pausing  now  and  then,  but  striking  no  attitudes; 
silent  as  a  shadow  and  graceful  as  a  wave  —  the 
very  spirit  of  the  tall,  lichen-covered  birches  and 
beeches  of  the  mountain-side.  When  food  is  scarce 
in  the  woods  he  comes  to  the  orchards  and  fields  for 
insects  and  wild  fruit,  and  any  chance  bit  of  food 
he  can  pick  up.  What  a  contrast  he  makes  to  the 
pampered  town  squirrel,  gross  in  form  and  heavy 
in  movement!  The  town  squirrel  is  the  real  rustic, 
while  the  denizen  of  the  woods  has  the  grace  and 
53 


EACH  AFTER  ITS  KIND 

refinement.  Domestication,  or  semi-domestication, 
coarsens  and  vulgarizes  the  wild  creatures;  only  in 
the  freedom  of  their  native  haunts  do  they  keep 
the  beauty  and  delicacy  of  form  and  color  that 
belong  to  them. 

A  nuthatch  comes  upon  the  apple-tree  in  front  of 
me,  uttering  now  and  then  his  soft  nasal  call,  and 
runs  up  and  down  and  round  the  trunk  and 
branches,  his  boat-shaped  body  navigating  the 
rough  surfaces  and  barely  touching  them.  Every 
moment  or  two  he  stops  and  turns  his  head  straight 
out  from  the  tree  as  if  he  had  an  extra  joint  in  his 
neck.  Is  he  on  the  lookout  for  danger?  He  pecks  a 
little  now  and  then,  but  most  of  the  food  he  is  in 
quest  of  seems  on  the  surface  and  is  very  minute. 
A  downy  woodpecker  comes  upon  the  same  tree. 
His  movements  are  not  so  free  as  those  of  the  nut- 
hatch. He  does  not  go  head  foremost  down  the  tree; 
his  head  is  always  pointed  upward.  He  braces  and 
steadies  himself  with  his  tail,  which  has  stiff  spines 
at  the  ends  of  the  quills.  By  a  curious  gymnastic 
feat  he  drops  down  the  trunk  inch  by  inch,  loosing 
his  hold  for  a  moment  and  instantly  recovering  it. 
He  cannot  point  his  beak  out  at  right  angles  to  the 
tree  as  can  the  nuthatch.  In  fact,  he  is  not  a  tree- 
creeper,  but  a  wood-pecker,  and  can  penetrate  fairly 
hard  wood  with  his  beak.  His  voice  has  a  harsh, 
metallic  ring  compared  with  that  of  the  soft,  child- 
like call  of  the  nuthatch.  His  only  contribution  to 
54 


EACH  AFTER  ITS  KIND 

the  music  of  the  spring  is  his  dry-limb  drum  with 
which  he  seeks  to  attract  his  mate  when  the  love 
passion  is  upon  him. 

Oh,  these  wild  creatures!  How  clear-cut,  how 
individual,  how  definite  they  are!  While  every 
individual  of  a  species  seems  stamped  with  the 
same  die,  the  species  themselves,  even  in  closely 
allied  groups,  are  as  distinct  and  various  in  their 
lineaments  and  characteristics  as  we  can  well 
conceive.  Behold  the  order  of  rodents,  including 
the  squirrels,  the  hares,  the  rabbits,  the  wood- 
chucks,  the  prairie-dogs,  the  rats  and  mice,  the 
porcupines » the  beavers  —  what  diversity  amid  the 
unity,  what  unlikeness  amid  the  sameness !  It  makes 
one  marvel  anew  at  the  ingenuity  and  inventive- 
ness of  Nature  —  some  living  above  ground,  some 
below,  some  depending  upon  fleetness  of  foot  and 
keenness  of  eye  for  safety,  some  upon  dens  and 
burrows  always  near  at  hand;  the  porcupine  upon 
an  armor  of  barbed  quills,  the  beaver  upon  his 
dam  and  his  sharpness  of  sense.  If  they  all  de- 
scended from  the  same  original  type-form,  how 
that  form  has  branched  like  a  tree  in  the  fields  — 
dividing  and  dividing  and  dividing  again!  But  the 
likeness  to  the  tree  fails  when  we  consider  that  no 
two  branches  are  alike;  in  fact,  that  they  are  as 
unlike  as  pears  and  peaches  and  apples  and  berries 
and  cherries  would  be  on  the  same  tree  —  all  of  the 
same  family,  but  diverging  widely  in  the  species. 
55 


EACH  AFTER  ITS  KIND 

The  ground-dwellers,  such  as  woodchucks  and 
prairie-dogs  and  gophers,  have  many  similar  habits, 
as  have  the  tree-dwellers  and  the  hares  and  rabbits. 
That  any  of  these  rodent  groups  will  branch  again 
and  develop  a  new  species  is  in  harmony  with  the 
doctrine  of  evolution.  But  these  evolutionary  proc- 
esses are  so  slow  that  probably  the  whole  span  of 
human  history  would  be  inadequate  to  measure  one 
of  them. 

Nearly  all  the  animal  forms  that  we  know  are 
specialized  forms,  like  our  tools  and  implements  — 
shaped  for  some  particular  line  of  activity.  Man  is 
the  most  generalized  of  animals;  his  organization 
opens  to  him  many  fields  of  activity.  The  wood- 
pecker must  peck  for  his  food,  the  kingfisher  must 
dive,  the  flycatcher  must  swoop,  the  hawk  must 
strike,  the  squirrel  must  gnaw,  the  cat  must  spring, 
the  woodcock  must  probe,  the  barnyard  fowls  must 
scratch,  and  so  on,  but  man  is  not  thus  limited.  His 
hands  are  tools  that  can  be  turned  to  a  thousand 
uses.  They  are  for  love  or  war,  to  caress  or  to  smite, 
to  climb  or  to  swim,  to  hurl  or  to  seize,  to  delve  or 
to  build. 

The  organization  of  most  animals  has  special 
reference  to  their  mode  of  getting  a  living.  That  is 
the  dominant  need,  and  stamps  itself  upon  every 
organism. 

Man  is  a  miscellaneous  feeder  and  a  world-wide 
traveler,  hence  all  climes  and  conditions  are  his. 
56 


EACH  AFTER  ITS  KIND 

He  is  at  home  in  the  arctics  or  the  tropics,  on  the 
sea,  on  the  land,  and  in  the  air;  a  fruit-eater,  a 
grain-eater,  a  flesh-eater,  a  nut-eater,  an  herb- 
eater;  his  generalized  anatomy  and  his  diversified 
mentality  make  the  whole  earth  his  dwelling-place, 
and  all  its  thousands  of  treasure-houses  are  made 
available  for  his  needs. 

What  diversity  in  unity  among  the  hawks!  Con- 
trast these  two  familiar  species  which  are  nearly  of 
a  size — the  marsh  hawk  and  the  hen,  or  red-tailed, 
hawk.  The  marsh  hawk  has  the  longer  tail,  and 
the  back  of  the  male  is  bluish-gray.  We  see  it  in 
summer  beating  up  and  down,  low  over  the  fields 
and  meadows,  its  attention  fixed  upon  the  ground 
beneath  it.  At  the  same  time  we  may  see  the  hen- 
hawk  soaring  aloft,  sweeping  leisurely  around  in 
great  circles,  or  climbing  higher  in  easy  spirals,  ap- 
parently abandoning  itself  to  the  joy  of  its  aerial 
freedom.  The  hen-hawk  is  a  bird  of  leisure  in  con- 
trast with  its  brother  of  the  marshes.  We  rarely  see 
it  hunting;  it  is  either  describing  its  great  circles 
against  the  sky,  apparently  in  the  same  mood  that 
the  skater  is  in  who  cuts  his  circles  and  figures  upon 
the  ice;  or  else  it  sits  perched  like  a  statue  high  up 
on  some  dead  branch  in  the  edge  of  the  forest,  or 
on  some  tree  by  the  roadside,  and  sees  the  sum- 
mer hours  go  by.  Solitude,  contemplation,  a  sense 
of  freedom,  seem  to  be  its  chief  delight,  while  we 
rarely  see  the  marsh  hawk  except  when  it  is  intent 
57 


EACH  AFTER  ITS  KIND 

upon  its  game.  It  haunts  the  fields  and  meadows 
over  a  wide  area  like  a  spirit,  up  and  down  and 
around  and  across  it  goes,  only  a  few  feet  above  the 
ground,  eyeing  sharply  every  yard  of  surface  be- 
neath it,  now  and  then  dropping  down  into  the 
grass,  never  swooping  or  striking  savagely,  but 
halting  and  alighting  rather  deliberately,  evidently 
not  in  pursuit  of  a  bird,  but  probably  attracted 
by  field  mice.  The  eye  follows  its  course  with  pleas- 
ure; such  industry,  such  ease  of  movement,  such 
deliberation,  such  a  tireless  quest  over  the  summer 
fields  —  all  contribute  to  make  a  picture  which  we 
look  upon  with  interest.  It  is  usually  the  female 
which  we  see  on  such  occasions;  she  is  larger  and 
darker  in  color  than  the  male,  and  apparently  upon 
her  falls  the  main  support  of  the  family.  Said  family 
is  usually  composed  of  three  or  four  young  in  a  nest 
upon  the  ground  in  a  marsh,  where  it  is  not  easy  for 
the  pedestrian  to  reach.  The  hunting  habits  of  the 
hen-hawk  are  quite  different.  It  subsists  largely,  not 
upon  hens  or  poultry  as  its  name  would  seem  to  in- 
dicate, but  upon  field  mice  and  other  small  rodents, 
which  it  swoops  down  upon  from  a  point  in  the  air 
above  them,  where  it  hovers  a  moment  on  beating 
wing,  or  from  the  top  of  some  old  stub  or  dry  branch 
in  the  meadow.  Its  nest  is  usually  placed  fifty  or 
more  feet  from  the  ground  in  some  large  forest  tree, 
and  is  made  of  dry  twigs  and  branches.  I  have 
found  but  one  marsh  hawk's  nest,  and  not  more 
58 


EACH  AFTER  ITS  KIND 

than  once  in  twenty  years  do  I  find  the  nest  of  a 
hen-hawk. 

Two  species  of  our  smaller  hawks  present  about 
as  sharp  a  contrast  as  do  the  two  I  have  just  de- 
scribed —  the  sparrow  hawk  and  the  pigeon  hawk. 
It  is  very  doubtful  if  the  sparrow  hawk  ever  kills 
sparrows,  its  food  being  largely  insects,  though  the 
pigeon  hawk  is  not  above  killing  pigeons  —  at  least 
of  pursuing  them  with  murderous  intent.  It  is  the 
terror  of  the  smaller  birds,  capturing  robins,  high- 
holes,  bluebirds,  thrushes,  and  almost  any  other 
it  can  get  its  claws  upon.  If  you  see  a  small  bird 
hotly  pursued  by  a  brown  hawk,  the  chances  are 
that  it  is  the  song  or  field  sparrow  making  desperate 
efforts  to  reach  the  cover  of  some  bush  or  tree.  On 
such  occasions  I  have  seen  the  pursued  bird  take 
refuge  in  a  thorn-bush  the  branches  of  which  had 
been  cropped  by  the  cattle  till  they  were  so  thick 
and  thorny  that  you  could  hardly  insert  your  hand 
among  them.  In  such  cases  the  hawk  is,  of  course, 
defeated,  but  he  will  beat  about  the  bush  spitefully 
in  his  vain  attempts  to  dislodge  his  game. 

The  sparrow  hawk  is  the  prettiest  of  our  hawks, 
and  probably  the  most  innocent.  One  midsummer 
when  I  was  a  boy  on  the  old  farm  we  had  a  sudden 
visitation  of  sparrow  hawks;  there  must  have  been 
at  least  fifty  about  the  old  meadow  at  one  time, 
alighting  upon  the  fence-stakes  or  hovering  on  the 
wing  above  the  grass  and  swooping  down  upon  the 
59 


EACH  AFTER  ITS  KIND 

big,  fat  grasshoppers.  It  was  a  pretty  sight  and  un- 
usual, as  I  have  witnessed  it  only  once  in  my  life. 

Our  birds  often  differ  in  their  habits  much  more 
than  in  their  forms  and  colors.  We  have  two  fly- 
catchers singularly  alike  in  general  appearance  — 
namely,  the  phosbe-bird  and  the  wood  pewee  — • 
which  differ  widely  in  their  habits  of  life.  The  phoebe 
is  the  better  known  because  she  haunts  our  porches 
and  sheds  and  bridges,  and  not  infrequently  makes 
herself  a  nuisance  from  the  vermin  with  which  her 
nest,  especially  her  midsummer  nest,  often  swarms. 
She  is  an  early-spring  bird,  and  her  late  March  or 
early  April  call,  repeating  over  and  over  the  name 
by  which  she  is  known,  is  a  sound  that  every  coun- 
try boy  delights  in.  The  wood  pewee  is  a  little  less 
in  size,  but  in  form  and  color  and  manners  is  almost 
the  duplicate  of  phoebe.  She  is  a  much  later  arrival, 
and  need  not  be  looked  for  till  the  trees  begin  to 
turn  over  their  new  leaves.  Then  you  may  hear  her 
tender,  plaintive  cry  amid  the  forest  branches  — 
also  a  repetition  of  her  own  name,  but  with  a  sylvan 
cadence  and  tenderness  peculiarly  its  own.  It  differs 
from  the  phcebe's  note  just  as  the  leafy  solitudes  of 
the  woods  differ  from  the  strong,  open  light  and  the 
fence-stakes  and  ridge-boards  where  the  phoebe 
loves  to  perch.  It  is  the  voice  or  cry  of  a  lonely, 
yearning  spirit,  attuned  to  great  sweetness  and 
tenderness.  The  phcebe  has  not  arrested  the  atten- 
tion of  any  of  our  poets,  but  the  pewee  has  inspired 
60 


EACH  AFTER  ITS  KIND 

at  least  one  fine  woodsy  poem.  I  refer  to  Trow- 
bridge's  "Pewee." 

The  nesting-habits  of  the  two  birds  differ  as 
widely  as  do  their  songs.  The  phoebe  is  an  architect 
tvho  works  with  mud  and  moss,  using  the  latter  in 
a  truly  artistic  way,  except  when  she  is  tempted,  as 
she  so  often  is,  to  desert  the  shelving  rocks  by  the 
waterfalls,  or  along  the  brows  of  the  wooded  slopes, 
for  the  painted  porches  of  our  houses  or  the  sawed 
timbers  of  our  outbuildings,  where  her  moss  is  in- 
congruous and  gives  away  the  secret  she  so  care- 
fully seeks  to  guard.  You  cannot  by  any  sleight-of- 
hand,  or  of  beak,  use  moss  on  a  mud  nest  so  as  to 
blend  it  with  a  porch  or  timber  background.  But 
in  the  niches  of  the  mossy  and  lichen-covered  over- 
hanging rocks  of  the  gorges  and  mountain-sides, 
where  her  forbears  practiced  the  art  of  nest-build- 
ing, and  where  she  still  often  sets  up  her  "procre- 
ant  cradle,"  what  in  the  shape  of  a  nest  can  be 
more  pleasing  and  exquisite  than  her  moss-covered 
structure?  It  is  entirely  fit.  It  is  Nature's  own  handi- 
work, and  thoroughly  in  the  spirit  of  the  shelving 
rocks. 

The  pewee  uses  no  mud  and  no  moss.  She  uses 
lichens  and  other  wild,  woodsy  things,  and  her  nest 
is  one  of  the  most  trim  and  artistic  of  wild-bird 
structures;  it  is  as  finished  and  symmetrical  as  an 
acorn-cup.  It  is  cup-shaped,  and  sits  upon  a  hori- 
zontal branch  of  beech  or  maple  as  if  it  were  a  grown 
61 


EACH  AFTER  ITS  KIND 

part  of  the  tree  —  not  one  loose  end  or  superfluous 
stroke  about  it. 

Two  other  species  of  our  flycatchers,  the  kingbird 
and  the  great  crested,  differ  in  form  and  coloration 
as  much  as  they  do  in  life-habits  —  the  kingbird 
being  rather  showily  clad  in  black,  gray,  and  white, 
with  a  peculiar,  affected,  tip-wing  flight,  and  haunt- 
ing the  groves  and  orchards,  while  the  great  crested 
flycatcher  is  rufous  or  copper-colored,  with  a  tinge 
of  saffron-yellow,  haunting  the  woods  and  building 
its  nest  in  a  cavity  in  a  tree,  occasionally  in  or- 
chards. 

Nature  repeats  herself  with  variations  in  two  of 
our  sparrows  —  the  song  sparrow,  and  the  vesper 
sparrow,  or  grass  finch.  The  latter  is  a  trifle  the 
larger  and  of  a  lighter  mottled  gray-and-brown 
color,  and  has  certain  field  habits,  such  as  skulking 
or  running  in  the  grass  and  running  along  the  high- 
way in  front  of  your  team.  It  does  not  wear  the 
little  dark-brown  breastpin  that  the  song  sparrow 
does,  and  it  has  two  lateral  white  quills  in  its  tail 
which  are  conspicuous  when  it  flies.  Its  general 
color,  and  these  white  quills,  suggest  the  skylark, 
and  it  was  doubtless  these  features  that  led  a  male 
lark  which  once  came  to  me  from  overseas,  and 
which  I  liberated  in  a  wide  field  near  home,  to  pay 
court  to  the  vesper  and  to  press  his  suit  day  after 
day,  to  the  obvious  embarrassment  of  the  sparrow. 

The  song  sparrow  is  better  known  than  the  vesper 
62 


EACH  AFTER  ITS  KIND 

to  all  country  people,  because  it  lives  nearer  our 
dwellings.  It  is  an  asset  of  every  country  garden  and 
lawn  and  near-by  roadside,  and  it  occasionally 
spends  the  winter  in  the  Hudson  River  Valley  when 
you  have,  carelessly  or  thoughtfully,  left  a  harvest 
of  weed-seeds  for  it  to  subsist  upon.  It  comes  before 
the  vesper  in  the  spring,  and  its  simple  song  on  a 
bright  March  or  April  morning  is  one  of  the  most 
welcome  of  all  vernal  sounds.  In  its  manners  it  is 
more  fussy  and  suspicious  than  the  vesper,  and  it 
worries  a  great  deal  about  its  nest  if  one  comes  any- 
where in  its  vicinity.  It  is  one  of  the  familiar,  half- 
domesticated  birds  that  suggest  home  to  us  wher- 
ever we  see  it. 

The  song  sparrow  is  remarkable  above  any  other 
bird  I  know  for  its  repertoire  of  songs.  Few  of  our 
birds  have  more  than  one  song,  except  in  those  cases 
when  a  flight  song  is  added  during  the  mating  sea- 
son, as  with  the  oven-bird,  the  purple  finch,  the 
goldfinch,  the  meadowlark,  and  a  few  others.  But 
every  song  sparrow  has  at  least  five  distinct  songs 
that  differ  from  one  another  as  much  as  any  five 
lyrics  by  the  same  poet  differ.  The  bird  from  its 
perch  on  the  bush  or  tree  will  repeat  one  song  over 
and  over,  usually  five  or  six  times  a  minute,  for  two 
or  three  minutes,  then  it  will  change  to  another 
strain  quite  different  in  time  and  measure,  and  re- 
peat it  for  a  dozen  or  more  times;  then  it  drops  into 
still  another  and  yet  another  and  another,  each 


EACH  AFTER  ITS  KIND 

song  standing  out  distinctly  as  a  new  combination 
and  sequence  of  sparrow  notes.  And  a  still  greater 
wonder  is  that  no  two  song  sparrows  have  the  same 
repertoire.  Each  bird  has  his  own  individual  songs, 
an  endless  and  bewildering  variety  inside  a  general 
resemblance.  The  song  sparrow  you  hear  in  Maine 
or  Canada  differs  widely  from  the  one  you  hear  in 
the  Hudson  River  Valley  or  on  the  Potomac.  Even 
in  the  same  neighborhood  I  have  never  yet  heard 
two  sparrows  whose  songs  were  exactly  alike, 
whereas  two  robins  or  meadowlarks  or  bluebirds 
or  wood  thrushes  or  vesper  sparrows  or  goldfinches 
or  indigo-birds  differ  from  one  another  in  their  songs 
as  little  as  they  do  in  their  forms  and  manners,  and 
from  one  end  of  the  country  to  the  other  there  is 
little  or  no  variation. 

During  ten  days  by  the  sea  one  July  I  was  greatly 
entertained  by  a  song  sparrow  which  had  a  favorite 
perch  on  the  top  of  a  small  red  cedar  that  stood  in 
front  of  the  cottage  where  I  was  staying.  Four  fifths 
of  the  day  at  least  it  was  perched  upon  this  little 
cedar  platform,  going  through  its  repertoire  of  song, 
over  and  over.  Getting  its  living  seemed  entirely  a 
secondary  matter;  the  primary  matter  was  the  song. 
I  estimated  that  it  sang  over  two  thousand  times 
each  day  that  I  heard  it.  It  had  probably  been  sing- 
ing at  the  same  rate  since  May  or  earlier,  and  would 
probably  keep  it  up  till  August  or  later.  The  latter 
part  of  July  and  the  whole  of  August  of  the  same 
64 


EACH  AFTER  ITS  KIND 

season  I  spent  at  Woodchuck  Lodge  in  the  Catskills, 
and  across  the  road  in  front  of  the  porch  there,  on 
the  top  of  an  old  plum-tree,  a  song  sparrow  sang 
throughout  the  greater  part  of  each  summer  day, 
as  did  the  one  by  the  sea,  going  through  its  reper- 
toire of  five  or  six  songs  in  happy  iteration.  It,  too, 
sang  about  three  hundred  times  an  hour,  and  nearly 
always  from  the  same  perch,  and,  as  most  assuredly 
was  the  case  with  the  seaside  bird,  singing  within 
earshot  of  its  brooding  mate.  But  its  songs  bore  only 
the  most  remote  general  resemblance  to  those  of  its 
seaside  brother.  When,  early  in  August,  the  mowing- 
machine  laid  low  the  grass  in  the  meadow  on  the 
edge  of  which  the  old  plum-tree  stood,  the  singer  be- 
haved as  if  some  calamity  had  befallen  him,  as  no 
doubt  there  had.  He  disappeared  from  his  favorite 
perch,  and  I  heard  him  no  more  except  at  long 
intervals  below  the  hill  in  another  field. 

The  vesper  sparrow  has  a  wilder  and  more  pleas- 
ing song  than  the  song  sparrow,  but  has  no  variety; 
so  far  as  my  ear  can  judge,  it  has  only  the  one  sweet, 
plaintive  strain  in  which  it  indulges  while  perched 
upon  a  stone  or  boulder  or  bare  knoll  in  a  hill  pas- 
ture or  by  a  remote  roadside.  The  charm  of  its  song 
is  greatly  enhanced  by  the  soft  summer  twilight  in 
which  it  is  so  often  uttered;  it  sounds  the  vespers  of 
the  fields.  The  vesper  sparrow  is  invariably  a  ground- 
builder,  placing  its  nest  of  dry  grass  in  the  open 
with  rarely  a  weed  or  tuft  of  grass  to  mark  its  site. 


EACH  AFTER  ITS  KIND 

Hence  its  eggs  or  young  often  fall  victims  to  the 
sharp-eyed,  all-devouring  crows,  as  they  lead  their 
clamorous  broods  about  the  summer  pastures.  The 
song  sparrow  more  frequently  selects  its  nesting- 
place  in  a  grassy  or  mossy  bank  by  the  roadside  or 
in  the  orchard,  when  it  does  not  leave  the  ground 
to  take  to  a  low  bush  or  tangle  of  vines  on  the  lawn, 
as  it  so  frequently  does. 

We  have  two  other  sparrows  that  are  close  akin 
—  indeed,  almost  like  fruit  on  the  same  tree  —  yet 
with  clear-cut  differences.  I  refer  to  the  "chippie," 
or  social  sparrow,  and  the  field,  or,  as  I  prefer  to 
call  it,  the  bush  sparrow  —  two  birds  that  come  so 
near  being  duplicates  of  each  other  that  in  my  boy- 
hood I  recognized  only  the  one  species,  the  chip- 
ping sparrow,  so  much  at  home  in  the  orchard  and 
around  the  dooryard.  Few  country  persons,  I  fancy, 
discriminate  the  two  species.  They  are  practically 
of  the  same  size  and  same  manners,  but  differ  in 
color.  The  bush  sparrow  is  more  russet,  has  a  russet 
beak  and  feet  and  legs,  and  its  general  appearance 
harmonizes  more  with  country  surroundings.  The 
two  species  differ  in  about  the  same  way  that  the 
town-dweller  differs  from  his  rustic  brother.  But  in 
the  matter  of  song  there  is  no  comparison  —  the 
strain  of  the  bush  sparrow  being  one  of  the  most 
tender  and  musical  of  all  our  sparrow  songs,  while 
that  of  the  "chippie,"  or  the  hair-bird,  as  it  is  often 
called,  is  a  shuffling  repetition  of  a  single  unmusical 
66 


EACH  AFTER  ITS  KIND 

note.  The  wild  scenes  and  field  solitudes  are  reflected 
in  the  bush  sparrow's  song,  while  that  of  the  chip- 
pie is  more  suggestive  of  the  sights  and  sounds 
near  the  haunts  of  men.  The  pure,  plaintive,  child- 
like strain  of  the  bush  sparrow  —  a  silver  scroll  of 
tender  song  —  heard  in  the  prophetic  solitude  of 
the  remote  fields  on  a  soft  April  or  May  morning  is 
to  me  one  of  the  most  touching  and  pleasing  bits  of 
bird-music  to  be  heard  in  the  whole  round  year. 

The  swarms  of  small  sparrows  that  one  sees  in 
August  and  September  in  the  vineyards  and  along 
the  bushy  highways  are  made  up  mostly  of  bush 
sparrows.  There  is  a  little  doubt  but  that  these 
birds  at  times  peck  and  haggle  the  grapes,  which 
"  Chippie  "  never  does.  The  bush  sparrow  builds  the 
more  compact  and  substantial  nest,  using  more  dry 
grass  and  weedy  growths,  and  less  horsehair.  It  is 
the  abundant  use  of  hair  that  has  given  "Chippie" 
the  name  of  the  hair-bird. 

The  hair-bird  appears  the  more  strikingly  dressed 
of  the  two.  Its  black  beak  and  legs,  the  darker  lines 
on  its  plumage,  the  well-defined,  brick-red  patch 
on  its  head  easily  separate  it  to  the  careful  observer 
from  the  other  species.  When  you  have  learned 
quickly  to  discriminate  these  two  kinds  of  sparrows, 
you  have  made  a  good  beginning  in  conquering  the 
bird  kingdom. 


NATURE  LEAVES 

I.   IN  WARBLER  TIME 

FT1HIS  early  May  morning,  as  I  walked  through 
-I-  the  fields,  the  west  wind  brought  to  me  a  sweet, 
fresh  odor,  like  that  of  our  little  white  sweet  violet 
(Viola  blanda).  It  came  probably  from  sugar  maples, 
just  shaking  out  their  fringelike  blossoms,  and  from 
the  blooming  elms.  For  a  few  hours,  when  these  trees 
first  bloom,  they  shed  a  decided  perfume.  It  was  the 
first  breath  of  May,  and  very  welcome.  April  has 
her  odors,  too,  very  delicate  and  suggestive,  but 
seldom  is  the  wind  perfumed  with  the  breath  of 
actual  bloom  before  May.  I  said,  It  is  warbler  time; 
the  first  arrivals  of  the  pretty  little  migrants  should 
be  noted  now.  Hardly  had  my  thought  defined  itself, 
when  before  me,  in  a  little  hemlock,  I  caught  the 
flash  of  a  blue,  white-barred  wing;  then  glimpses  of 
a  yellow  breast  and  a  yellow  crown.  I  approached 
cautiously,  and  in  a  moment  more  had  a  full  view 
of  one  of  our  rarer  warblers,  the  blue-winged  yellow 
warbler.  Very  pretty  he  was,  too,  the  yellow  cap, 
the  yellow  breast,  and  the  black  streak  through  the 
eye  being  conspicuous  features.  He  would  not  stand 
to  be  looked  at  long,  but  soon  disappeared  in  a 
near-by  tree. 


NATURE  LEAVES 

The  ruby-crowned  kinglet  was  piping  in  an  ever- 
green tree  not  far  away,  but  him  I  had  been  hearing 
for  several  days.  With  me  the  kinglets  come  before 
the  first  warblers,  and  may  be  known  to  the  attentive 
eye  by  their  quick,  nervous  movements,  and  small, 
oiive-gray  forms,  and  to  the  discerning  ear  by  their 
hurried,  musical,  piping  strains.  How  soft,  how 
rapid,  how  joyous  and  lyrical  their  songs  are!  Very 
few  country  people,  I  imagine,  either  see  them  or 
hear  them.  The  powers  of  observation  of  country 
people  are  seldom  fine  enough  and  trained  enough. 
They  see  and  hear  coarsely.  An  object  must  be  big 
and  a  sound  loud,  to  attract  their  attention.  Have 
you  seen  and  heard  the  kinglet?  If  not,  the  finer  in- 
ner world  of  nature  is  a  sealed  book  to  you.  When 
your  senses  take  in  the  kinglet  they  will  take  in  a 
thousand  other  objects  that  now  escape  you. 

My  first  warbler  in  the  spring  is  usually  the  yel- 
low redpoll,  which  I  see  in  April.  It  is  not  a  bird  of 
the  trees  and  woods,  but  of  low  bushes  in  the  open, 
often  alighting  upon  the  ground  in  quest  of  food. 
I  sometimes  see  it  on  the  lawn.  The  last  one  I  saw 
was  one  April  day,  when  I  went  over  to  the  creek  to 
see  if  the  suckers  were  yet  running  up.  The  bird 
was  flitting  amid  the  low  bushes,  now  and  then 
dropping  down  to  the  gravelly  bank  of  the  stream. 
Its  chestnut  crown  and  yellow  under  parts  were 
noticeable. 

The  past  season  I  saw  for  the  first  time  the  golden- 


NATURE  LEAVES 

winged  warbler  —  a  shy  bird,  that  eluded  me  a 
long  time  in  an  old  clearing  that  had  grown  up  with 
low  bushes.  The  song  first  attracted  my  attention, 
it  is  so  like  in  form  to  that  of  the  black-throated 
green-back,  but  in  quality  so  inferior.  The  first  dis- 
tant glimpse  of  the  bird,  too,  suggested  the  green- 
back, so  for  a  time  I  deceived  myself  with  the  notion 
that  it  was  the  green-back  with  some  defect  in  its 
vocal  organs.  A  day  or  two  later  I  heard  two  of 
them,  and  then  concluded  my  inference  was  a  hasty 
one.  Following  one  of  the  birds  up,  I  caught  sight  of 
its  yellow  crown,  which  is  much  more  conspicuous 
than  its  yellow  wing-bars.  Its  song  is  like  this,  'n-'n 
de  de  de,  with  a  peculiar  reedy  quality,  but  not  at  all 
musical,  falling  far  short  of  the  clear,  sweet,  lyrical 
song  of  the  green-back.  Nehrling  sees  in  it  a  resem- 
blance to  that  of  the  Maryland  yellow-throat,  but 
I  fail  to  see  any  resemblance  whatever. 

One  appreciates  how  bright  and  gay  the  plumage 
of  many  of  our  warblers  is  when  he  sees  one  of  them 
alight  upon  the  ground.  While  passing  along  a  wood 
road  in  June,  a  male  black-throated  green  came 
down  out  of  the  hemlocks  and  sat  for  a  moment  on 
the  ground  before  me.  How  out  of  place  he  looked, 
like  a  bit  of  ribbon  or  millinery  just  dropped  there ! 
The  throat  of  this  warbler  always  suggests  the  finest 
black  velvet.  Not  long  after  I  saw  the  chestnut- 
sided  warbler  do  the  same  thing.  We  were  trying 
to  make  it  out  in  a  tree  by  the  roadside,  when  it 
70 


NATURE  LEAVES 

dropped  down  quickly  to  the  ground  in  pursuit  of 
an  insect,  and  sat  a  moment  upon  the  brown  surface, 
giving  us  a  vivid  sense  of  its  bright  new  plumage. 

When  the  leaves  of  the  trees  are  just  unfolding, 
or,  as  Tennyson  says, 

"  When  all  the  woods  stand  in  a  mist  of  green. 
And  nothing  perfect," 

the  tide  of  migrating  warblers  is  at  its  height.  They 
come  in  the  night,  and  in  the  morning  the  trees  are 
alive  with  them.  The  apple-trees  are  just  showing 
the  pink,  and  how  closely  the  birds  inspect  them  in 
their  eager  quest  for  insect  food!  One  cold,  rainy 
day  at  this  season  Wilson's  black-cap  —  a  bird  that 
is  said  to  go  north  nearly  to  the  Arctic  Circle  — 
explored  an  apple-tree  in  front  of  my  window.  It 
came  down  within  two  feet  of  my  face,  as  I  stood  by 
the  pane,  and  paused  a  moment  in  its  hurry  and 
peered  in  at  me,  giving  me  an  admirable  view  of  its 
form  and  markings.  It  was  wet  and  hungry,  and  it 
had  a  long  journey  before  it.  What  a  small  body  to 
cover  such  a  distance! 

The  black-poll  warbler,  which  one  may  see  about 
the  same  time,  is  a  much  larger  bird  and  of  slower 
movement,  and  is  colored  much  like  the  black  and 
white  creeping  warbler  with  a  black  cap  on  its  head. 
The  song  of  this  bird  is  the  finest  in  volume  and  most 
insectlike  of  that  of  any  warbler  known  to  me.  It 
is  the  song  of  the  black  and  white  creeper  reduced, 
high  and  swelling  in  the  middle  and  low  and  faint 
71 


NATURE  LEAVES 

at  its  beginning  and  ending.  When  one  has  learned 
to  note  and  discriminate  the  warblers,  he  has  made  a 
good  beginning  in  his  ornithological  studies. 

II.   A   SHORT   WALK 

One  midsummer  afternoon  I  went  up  to  "Scot- 
land "  and  prowled  about  amid  the  raspberry-bushes, 
finding  a  little  fruit,  black  and  red,  here  and  there, 
and  letting  my  eyes  wander  to  the  distant  farms  and 
mountains.  The  wild  but  familiar  prospect  dilated 
and  rested  me.  As  I  lingered  near  the  torn  edge  of  the 
woods  in  a  tangle  of  raspberry-bushes,  I  caught  a 
glimpse  of  some  large  bird  dropping  suddenly  to  the 
ground  from  a  tall  basswood  that  stood  in  the  edge 
of  the  open,  where  it  was  hidden  from  my  view. 
Was  it  a  crow  or  a  hawk?  A  hawk,  I  guessed,  from 
its  manner  of  descent.  I  threw  a  stone  after  waiting 
some  moments  for  it  to  reappear,  but  it  made  no 
sign.  Then  I  moved  slowly  toward  the  spot,  and 
presently  up  sprang  a  hen-hawk  and,  uttering  its 
characteristic  squeal,  circled  around  near  me  and 
then  alighted  not  far  off.  A  young  hawk,  I  saw  it 
was,  and  quite  unsophisticated.  Presently,  as  I 
made  my  way  along,  just  touching  the  edge  of  the 
woods,  a  covey  of  nearly  full-grown  partridges  burst 
up  out  of  the  berry -bushes,  ten  or  twelve  of  them, 
and  went  humming  up  into  the  denser  woods,  some 
of  them  alighting  in  the  trees,  whence  they  stretched 
their  necks  to  watch  me  as  I  passed  along.  The  dust 
72 


NATURE  LEAVES 

flew  from  their  plumage  as  they  jumped  up,  as  if 
they  had  been  earthing  their  wings. 

My  next  adventure  was  with  a  young  but  fully 
grown  bluebird,  which  crawled  and  fluttered  away 
from  my  feet  as  I  came  upon  it  hi  the  open.  It 
could  not  fly,  and  I  easily  picked  it  up.  Its  plumage 
showed  the  mingled  blue  and  speckled  brown  of  the 
immature  bird.  I  looked  it  over,  but  could  see  no 
mark  or  sign  of  injury  to  wing  or  body.  Its  plum- 
age was  unruffled  and  its  eye  bright,  but  its  move- 
ments were  feeble.  Was  it  ill  or  starved?  I  could  not 
tell  which,  probably  the  latter.  It  may  have  got 
lost  from  the  brood  and  was  not  yet  able  to  forage 
for  itself.  I  left  it  under  the  edge  of  a  rock,  where 
the  fresh  blue  of  the  ends  of  its  wings  and  tail  held 
my  eye  a  moment  as  I  turned  to  go. 

Farther  along,  under  some  shelving  rocks,  I  came 
upon  two  empty  phcebes'  nests  —  a  relic  of  bird-life 
that  always  gives  a  touch  to  the  rocks  that  I  delight 
in.  I  find  none  of  these  nests  placed  lower  than 
three  feet  from  the  ground,  and  always  in  places 
that  seem  to  be  carefully  chosen  with  reference  to 
enemies  that  can  reach  and  climb. 

Two  or  three  woodchucks,  which  I  bagged  with 
my  eye,  completed  my  afternoon's  adventures. 


IN  FIELD  AND  WOOD 

I.  INTENSIVE  OBSERVATION 

fllHE  casual  glances  or  the  admiring  glances  that 
JL  we  cast  upon  nature  do  not  go  very  far  in  mak- 
ing us  acquainted  with  her  real  ways.  Only  long  and 
close  scrutiny  can  reveal  these  to  us.  The  look  of 
appreciation  is  not  enough;  the  eye  must  become 
critical  and  analytical  if  we  would  know  the  exact 
truth. 

Close  scrutiny  of  an  object  in  nature  will  nearly 
always  yield  some  significant  fact  that  our  admir- 
ing gaze  did  not  take  in.  I  learned  a  new  fact  about 
the  teazel  the  other  day  by  scrutinizing  it  more, 
closely  than  I  had  ever  before  done;  I  discovered 
that  the  wave  of  bloom  begins  in  the  middle  of  the 
head  and  spreads  both  ways,  up  and  down,  whereas 
in  all  other  plants  known  to  me  with  flowering 
heads  or  spikes,  except  the  goldenrod  and  the  steeple- 
bush,  the  wave  of  bloom  begins  at  the  bottom  and 
creeps  upward  like  a  flame.  In  the  goldenrod  it 
drops  down  from  branch  to  branch.  In  vervain,  in 
blueweed,  in  Venus'  looking-glass,  in  the  mullein, 
in  the  evening-primrose,  and  others,  the  bloom 
creeps  slowly  upward  from  the  bottom. 
74 


IN  FIELD  AND  WOOD 

But  with  the  teazel  the  flame  of  bloom  is  first  kin- 
dled in  the  middle;  to-day  you  see  the  head  with  this 
purple  zone  or  girdle  about  it,  and  in  a  day  or  two 
you  see  two  purple  girdles  with  an  open  space  be- 
tween them,  and  these  move,  the  one  up  and  the 
other  down,  till  the  head  stands  with  a  purple  base 
and  a  purple  crown  with  a  broad  space  of  neutral 
green  between  them. 

This  is  a  sample  of  the  small  but  significant  facts 
in  nature  that  interest  me  —  exceptional  facts  that 
show  how  nature  at  times  breaks  away  from  a  fixed 
habit,  a  beaten  path,  so  to  speak,  and  tries  a  new 
course.  She  does  this  in  animal  life  too. 

Huxley  mentions  a  curious  exception  to  the  general 
plan  of  the  circulation  of  the  blood.  In  all  animals 
that  have  a  circulation  the  blood  takes  one  definite 
and  invariable  direction  except  in  the  case  of  one 
class  of  marine  animals,  called  ascidians;  in  them 
the  heart,  after  beating  a  certain  number  of  times, 
stops.and  begins  to  beat  the  opposite  way,  so  as  to 
reverse  the  current;  then  in  a  moment  or  two  it 
changes  again  and  drives  the  blood  in  the  other 
direction. 

All  things  are  possible  with  nature,  and  these 
unexpected  possibilities  or  departures  from  the  gen- 
eral plan  are  very  interesting.  It  is  interesting  to 
know  that  any  creature  can  come  into  being  without 
a  father,  but  with  only  a  grandfather,  yet  such  is 
the  case.  The  drone  in  the  hive  has  no  father;  the 
75 


IN  FIELD  AND  WOOD 

eggs  of  the  unfertilized  queen  produce  drones  —  that 
is,  in  producing  males,  the  male  is  dispensed  with.  It 
is  to  produce  the  neuters  or  the  workers  that  the 
service  of  the  male  is  required.  The  queen  bee  is 
developed  from  one  of  these  neuter  eggs,  hence  her 
male  offspring  have  only  a  grandfather. 

The  chipmunk  is  an  old  friend  of  my  boyhood  and 
my  later  years  also,  but  by  scrutinizing  his  ways  a 
little  more  closely  than  usual  the  past  summer  I 
learned  things  about  this  pretty  little  rodent  that 
I  did  not  before  know.  I  discovered,  for  instance, 
that  he  digs  his  new  hole  for  his  winter  quarters  in 
midsummer. 

In  my  strolls  afield  or  along  the  road  in  July  I 
frequently  saw  a  fresh  pile  of  earth  upon  the  grass 
near  a  stone  fence,  or  in  the  orchard,  or  on  the  edge 
of  the  woods  —  usually  a  peck  or  two  of  bright, 
new  earth  carefully  put  down  in  a  pile  upon  the 
ground  without  any  clue  visible  as  to  where  it  prob- 
ably came  from.  But  a  search  in  the  grass  or  leaves 
usually  disclosed  its  source  —  a  little  round  hole 
neatly  cut  through  the  turf  and  leading  straight 
downward.  I  came  upon  ten  such  mounds  of  earth 
upon  a  single  farm,  and  found  the  hole  from  which 
each  came,  from  one  to  six  feet  away.  In  one  case, 
in  a  meadow  recently  mowed,  I  had  to  explore  the 
stubble  with  my  finger  over  several  square  yards  of 
surface  before  I  found  the  squirrel's  hole,  so  undis- 
turbed was  the  grass  around  it;  not  a  grain  of  soil 
76 


IN  FIELD  AND  WOOD 

had  the  little  delver  dropped  near  it,  and  not  the 
slightest  vestige  of  a  path  had  he  made  from  the 
tunnel  to  the  dump. 

And  this  feature  was  noticeable  in  every  case;  the 
hole  had  been  dug  several  yards  under  ground  and 
several  pecks  of  fresh  earth  removed  to  a  distance  of 
some  feet  without  the  least  speck  of  soil  or  the  least 
trace  of  the  workman's  footsteps  showing  near  the 
entrance;  such  clean,  deft  workmanship  was  remark- 
able. All  this  half -bushel  or  more  of  earth  the  squir- 
rel must  have  carried  out  in  his  cheek  pockets,  and 
he  must  have  made  hundreds  of  trips  to  and  fro  from 
his  dump  to  his  hole,  and  yet  if  he  had  flown  like  a 
bird  the  turf  could  not  have  been  freer  from  the 
marks  of  his  going  and  coming;  and  he  had  cut  down 
through  the  turf  as  one  might  have  done  with  an  au- 
ger, without  bruising  or  disturbing  in  any  way  the 
grass  about  the  edges.  It  was  a  clean,  neat  job  in 
every  case,  so  much  so  that  it  was  hard  to  believe 
that  the  delver  did  not  come  up  from  below  and 
have  a  back  door  from  whence  he  carried  his  soil 
some  yards  away. 

Indeed,  I  have  heard  this  theory  stated.  "  Look 
under  the  pile  of  earth,"  said  a  friend  who  was  with 
me  and  who  had  observed  the  work  of  the  pocket 
gopher  in  the  West,  "  and  you  will  find  the  back  door 
there."  But  it  was  not  so.  I  carefully  removed  four 
piles  of  earth  and  dug  away  the  turf  beneath  them, 
and  no  hole  was  to  be  found. 
77- 


IN  FIELD  AND  WOOD 

One  day  we  found  a  pile  of  earth  in  a  meadow,  and 
near  it  a  hole  less  than  two  inches  deep,  showing 
where  the  chipmunk  had  begun  to  dig  and  had 
struck  a  stone;  then  he  went  a  foot  or  more  up  the 
hill  and  began  again;  here  he  soon  struck  stones  as 
before,  then  he  went  still  farther  up  the  hill,  and 
this  time  was  successful  in  penetrating  the  soil.  This 
was  conclusive  proof  that  these  round  holes  are  cut 
from  above  and  not  from  below,  as  we  often  see  in 
the  case  of  the  woodchuck-hole.  The  squirrel  ap- 
parently gnaws  through  the  turf,  instead  of  dig- 
ging through,  and  carries  away  the  loosened  mate- 
rial in  his  mouth,  never  dropping  or  scattering  a 
grain  of  it.  No  home  was  ever  built  with  less  lit- 
ter, no  cleaner  dooryard  from  first  to  last  can  be 
found. 

The  absence  of  anything  like  a  trail  or  beaten 
way  from  the  mound  of  earth  to  the  hole,  or  anything 
suggesting  passing  feet,  I  understood  better  when, 
later  in  the  season,  day  after  day  I  saw  a  chipmunk 
carrying  supplies  into  his  den,  which  was  in  the  turf 
by  the  roadside  about  ten  feet  from  a  stone  wall.  He 
covered  the  distance  by  a  series  of  short  jumps,  ap- 
parently striking  each  time  upon  his  toes  between 
the  spears  of  grass,  and  leaving  no  marks  whatever 
by  which  his  course  could  be  traced.  This  was  also 
his  manner  of  leaving  the  hole,  and  doubtless  it  was 
his  manner  in  carrying  away  the  soil,  from  his  tun- 
nel to  the  dumping-pile.  He  left  no  sign  upon 
78 


IN  FIELD  AND  WOOD 

the  grass,  he  disturbed  not  one  spear  about  the  en- 
trance. 

There  was  a  mystery  about  this  den  by  the  road- 
side of  which  I  have  just  spoken  —  the  pile  of  earth 
could  not  be  found;  unless  the  roadmaker  had  re- 
moved it,  it  must  have  been  hidden  in  or  beneath 
the  stone  wall. 

And  there  was  a  mystery  about  some  of  the  other 
holes  that  was  absolutely  baffling  to  me.  In  at  least 
four  mounds  of  fresh  earth  I  found  freshly  dug 
stones  that  I  could  not  by  any  manipulation  get 
back  into  the  hole  out  of  which  they  had  evidently 
come.  They  were  all  covered  with  fresh  earth,  and 
were  in  the  pile  of  soil  with  many  other  smaller 
stones.  In  one  case  a  stone  two  inches  long,  one 
and  one  half  inches  broad,  and  one  half  inch  thick 
was  found.  In  two  other  cases  stones  of  about  the 
same  length  and  breadth  but  not  so  thick  were 
found,  and  in  neither  case  could  the  stone  be  forced 
into  the  hole.  In  still  another  case  the  entrance  to 
the  den  was  completely  framed  by  the  smaller  roots 
of  a  beech-tree,  and  in  the  little  mound  of  earth  near 
it  were  two  stones  that  could  only  be  gotten  back 
into  the  hole  by  springing  one  of  these  roots,  which 
required  considerable  force  to  do.  In  two  at  least 
of  these  four  cases  it  was  a  physical  impossibility  for 
the  stones  to  have  come  out  of  the  hole  from  whence 
the  mound  of  earth  and  the  lesser  stones  evidently 
came,  yet  how  happened  they  in  the  pile  of  earth 
79 


IN  FIELD  AND  WOOD 

'freshly  earth-stained?  The  squirrel  could  not  have 
carried  them  in  his  cheek  pouches,  they  were  so 
large;  how,  then,  did  he  carry  them? 

The  matter  stood  thus  with  me  for  some  weeks; 
I  was  up  against  a  little  problem  in  natural  history 
that  I  could  not  solve.  Late  in  November  I  visited 
the  scene  of  the  squirrel-holes  again,  and  at  last  got 
the  key  to  the  mystery :  the  cunning  little  delver  cuts 
a  groove  in  one  side  of  the  hole  just  large  enough 
to  let  the  stone  through,  then  packs  it  full  of  soil 
again.  When  I  made  my  November  visit  it  had  been 
snowing  and  raining  and  freezing  and  thawing,  and 
the  top  of  the  ground  was  getting  soft.  A  red  squir- 
rel had  visited  the  hole  in  the  orchard  where  two  of 
the  largest  stones  were  found  in  the  pile  of  earth, 
and  had  apparently  tried  to  force  his  way  into  the 
chipmunk's  den.  In  doing  so  he  had  loosened  the 
earth  in  the  groove,  softened  by  the  rains,  and  it 
had  dropped  out.  The  groove  was  large  enough  for 
me  to  lay  my  finger  in  and  just  adequate  to  admit 
the  stones  into  the  hole.  This,  then,  was  the  way  the 
little  engineer  solved  the  problem,  and  I  experienced 
a  sense  of  relief  that  I  had  solved  mine. 

I  visited  the  second  hole  where  the  large  stone 
was  in  the  pile  of  earth,  and  found  that  the  same 
thing  had  happened  there.  A  red  squirrel,  bent  on 
plunder,  had  been  trying  to  break  in,  and  had  re- 
moved the  soil  in  the  groove.1 

1  I  feel  bound  to  report  that  the  next  season  I  found  a  pile 
80 


IN  FIELD  AND  WOOD 

To  settle  the  point  as  to  whether  or  not  the  chip- 
munk has  a  back  door,  which  in  no  case  had  I  been 
able  to  find,  we  dug  out  the  one  by  the  roadside, 
whose  mound  of  earth  we  could  not  discover.  We 
followed  his  tortuous  course  through  the  soil  three 
or  four  feet  from  the  entrance  and  nearly  three  feet 
beneath  the  surface,  where  we  found  him  in,  his 
chamber,  warm  in  his  nest  of  leaves,  but  not  asleep. 
He  had  no  back  door.  He  came  out  (it  was  a  male) 
as  a  hand  was  thrust  into  his  chamber,  and  the  same 
fearless,  strong  hand  seized  him,  but  did  not  hurt 
him.  His  chamber  was  spacious  enough  to  hold  about 
four  quarts  of  winter  stores  and  leave  him  consider- 
able room  to  stir  about  in.  His  supplies  consisted  of 
the  seeds  of  the  wild  buckwheat  (Polygonum  du- 
metorum)  and  choke-cherry  pits,  and  formed  a  very 
unpromising  looking  mess.  His  buckwheat  did 
not  seem  to  have  been  properly  cured,  for  much  of 
it  was  mouldy,  but  it  had  been  carefully  cleaned, 
every  kernel  of  it.  There  were  nearly  four  quarts  of 
seeds  altogether,  and  over  one  half  of  it  was  wild 
buckwheat.  I  was  curious  to  know  approximately 
the  number  of  these  seeds  he  had  gathered  and 
shucked.  I  first  found  the  number  it  took  to  fill  a 
lady's  thimble,  and  then  the  number  of  thimbles 

of  earth  which  a  chipmunk  had  removed  from  his  den,  contain- 
ing a  stone  too  large  to  go  into  the  hole,  yet  the  most  careful 
examination  failed  to  reveal  that  there  had  ever  been  any 
groove  cut  in  it,  or  that  it  had  ever  been  in  any  way  enlarged. 

81 


IN  FIELD  AND  WOOD 

full  it  took  to  fill  a  cup,  and  so  reached  the  number 
in  the  two  quarts,  and  found  that  it  amounted  to 
the  surprising  figure  of  250,000. 

Think  of  the  amount  of  patient  labor  required 
to  clean  250,000  of  the  small  seeds  of  the  wild  buck- 
wheat !  The  grains  are  hardly  one  third  the  size  of 
those  of  the  cultivated  kind  and  are  jet  black  when 
the  husk  is  removed.  Probably  every  seed  was 
husked  with  those  deft  little  hands  and  teeth  as  it 
was  gathered,  before  it  went  into  his  cheek  pockets, 
but  what  a  task  it  must  have  been! 

Poor  little  hermit,  it  seemed  pathetic  to  find  him 
facing  the  coming  winter  there  with  such  inferior 
stuff  in  his  granary.  Not  a  nut,  not  a  kernel  of  corn 
or  wheat.  Why  he  had  not  availed  himself  of  the 
oats  that  grew  just  over  the  fence  I  should  like  to 
know.  Of  course,  the  wild  buckwheat  must  have 
been  more  to  his  liking.  How  many  hazardous  trips 
along  fences  and  into  the  bushes  his  stores  repre- 
sented !  The  wild  creatures  all  live  in  as  savage  a 
country  as  did  our  earliest  ancestors,  and  the  enemy 
of  each  is  lying  in  wait  for  it  at  nearly  every  turn. 

Digging  the  little  fellow  out,  of  course,  brought 
ruin  upon  his  house,  and  I  think  the  Muse  of  Natural 
History  contemplated  the  scene  with  many  com- 
punctions of  conscience, — if  she  has  any  conscience, 
which  I  am  inclined  to  doubt.  But  our  human 
hearts  prompted  us  to  do  all  we  could  to  give  the 
provident  little  creature  a  fresh  start;  we  put  his 
82 


IN  FIELD  AND  WOOD 

supplies  carefully  down  beside  the  stone  wall  into 
which  he  had  disappeared  on  being  liberated,  and 
the  next  day  he  had  carried  a  large  part  of  them 
away.  He  evidently  began  at  once  to  "  hustle," 
and  I  trust  he  found  or  made  a  new  retreat  from 
the  winter  before  it  was  too  late. 

I  doubt  if  the  chipmunk  ever  really  hibernates;  the 
hibernating  animals  do  not  lay  up  winter  stores,  but 
he  no  doubt  indulges  in  many  very  long  before-din- 
ner and  after-dinner  naps.  It  is  blackest  night  there 
in  his  den  three  feet  under  the  ground,  and  this  lasts 
about  four  months,  or  until  the  premonitions  of 
coming  spring  reach  him  in  March  and  call  him 
forth. 

I  am  curious  to  know  if  the  female  chipmunk  also 
digs  a  den  for  herself,  or  takes  up  with  one  occupied 
by  the  male  the  previous  winter. 

One  ought  to  be  safe  in  generalizing  upon  the  habits 
of  chipmunks  in  digging  their  holes,  after  observing 
ten  of  them,  yet  one  must  go  slow  even  then.  Nine 
of  the  holes  I  observed  had  a  pile  of  earth  near  them; 
the  tenth  hole  had  no  dump  that  I  could  find.  Then 
I  found  four  holes  with  the  soil  hauled  out  and  piled 
up  about  the  entrance  precisely  after  the  manner 
of  woodchucks.  This  was  a  striking  exception  to  the 
general  habit  of  the  chipmunk  in  this  matter.  "  Is 
this  the  way  the  female  digs  her  hole,"  I  asked  my- 
self, " or  is  it  the  work  of  young  chipmunks?" 

I  have  in  two  cases  found  holes  in  the  ground  on 


IN  FIELD  AND  WOOD 

the  borders  of  swamps,  occupied  by  weasels,  but  the 
holes  were  in  all  outward  respects  like  those  made  by 
chipmunks,  with  no  soil  near  the  entrance.  The  wood- 
chuck  makes  no  attempt  to  conceal  his  hole  by  carry- 
ing away  the  soil;  neither  does  the  prairie-dog,  nor 
the  pocket  gopher.  The  pile  of  telltale  earth  in  each 
case  may  be  seen  from  afar,  but  our  little  squirrel 
seems  to  have  notions  of  neatness  and  concealment 
that  he  rarely  departs  from.  The  more  I  study  his 
ways,  the  more  I  see  what  a  clever  and  foxy  little 
rodent  he  is. 

II.  FROM  A  WALKER'S  WALLET 


On  the  morning  after  our  first  hard  frost  in  late 
October  or  early  November  how  rapidly  the  leaves 
let  go  their  hold  upon  their  parent  stems!  I  stood 
for  some  minutes  one  such  morning  under  a  maple 
by  the  roadside  to  witness  the  silent  spectacle.  The 
leaves  came  down  one  by  one  like  great  golden  flakes; 
there  was  no  motion  in  the  air  to  loosen  them;  their 
hour  had  come,  and  they  gave  up  life  easily  and 
gracefully. 

What  a  gay  company  they  had  made  on  that  tree 
all  summer,  clapping  their  hands  in  gladness,  and 
joyously  drinking  in  the  air  and  the  sunshine,  whis- 
pering, rustling,  swayed  by  emotion,  or  stilled  by  the 
night  dews,  and  each  and  all  doing  their  work !  Now 
84 


IN  FIELD  AND  WOOD 

their  day  is  done,  and  one  by  one  they  let  go  their 
hold  upon  the  parent  stem,  and  fall  to  the  earth. 

Some  come  hurrying  and  tumbling  down;  some 
drop  almost  like  clods;  some  come  eddying  and  bal- 
ancing down ;  and  now  and  then  one  comes  down  as 
gracefully  as  a  bird,  sailing  around  in  an  easy  spiral 
like  a  dove  alighting,  its  edges  turned  up  like  wings, 
and  its  stems  pointing  downward  like  a  head  and 
neck.  One  can  hardly  believe  it  is  not  a  thing  of  life. 
It  reaches  the  ground  as  lightly  as  a  snowflake.  If 
one  could  only  finish  his  own  career  as  gracefully*. 

What  a  contrast  to  the  falling  of  the  leaves  of  some 
other  trees,  say  those  of  the  mulberry!  The  leaves 
of  this  tree  fall,  on  such  mornings,  like  soldiers  slam 
in  battle  with  all  their  powers  in  full  force.  They 
drop  heavily  and  clumsily,  apparently  untouched 
by  the  ripening  process  that  so  colors  the  maple  and 
other  leaves.  They  are  rank  green  and  full  of  sap. 
So  with  the  locusts,  and  the  apple  and  cherry  leaves; 
they  all  seem  cut  off  prematurely. 

But  the  leaves  of  most  of  our  native  trees  —  oak, 
ash,  hickory,  maple  —  seem  to  fall  in  the  fullness 
of  time.  They  have  ripened  like  the  grain  and  the 
fruit;  they  are  colored  like  the  clouds  at  sunset;  and 
their  demise  seems  a  welcome  event.  They  make  the 
woods  and  groves  gay;  they  carpet  the  ground  as 
with  sunset  clouds;  it  is  a  funeral  that  is  like  a  festi- 
val; it  is  the  golden  age  come  back. 

The  falling  of  these  gayly  colored  leaves  seems  to 
85 


IN  FIELD  AND  WOOD 

make  a  holiday  in  nature;  it  is  like  the  fluttering  of 
ribbons  and  scarfs ;  it  does  not  suggest  age  and  decay ; 
it  suggests  some  happy  celebration.  They  seem  to 
augment  the  sunshine,  to  diffuse  their  own  color 
into  it,  or  to  give  back  to  it  the  light  they  have  been 
so  long  absorbing.  The  day  itself  drops  upon  the 
earth  like  a  great  golden  leaf  fallen  from  the  tree 
of  Ygdrasyl. 


It  always  gives  me  a  little  pleasurable  emotion 
when  I  see  in  the  autumn  woods  where  the  downy 
woodpecker  has  just  been  excavating  his  winter 
quarters  in  a  dead  limb  or  tree-trunk.  I  am  walk- 
ing along  a  trail  or  wood-road  when  I  see  something 
like  coarse  new  sawdust  scattered  on  the  ground. 
I  know  at  once  what  carpenter  has  been  at  work 
in  the  trees  overhead,  and  I  proceed  to  scrutinize 
the  trunks  and  branches.  Presently  I  am  sure  to  de- 
tect a  new  round  hole  about  an  inch  and  a  half  in 
diameter  on  the  under  side  of  a  dead  limb,  or  in  a 
small  tree-trunk.  This  is  Downy's  cabin,  where 
he  expects  to  spend  the  winter  nights,  and  a  part  of 
the  stormy  days,  too. 

When  he  excavates  it  in  an  upright  tree-trunk,  he 
usually  chooses  a  spot  beneath  a  limb ;  the  limb  forms 
a  sort  of  rude  hood,  and  prevents  the  rain-water 
from  running  down  into  it.  It  is  a  snug  and  pretty 
retreat,  and  a  very  safe  one,  I  think.  I  doubt  whether 


IN  FIELD  AND  WOOD 

the  driving  snow  ever  reaches  him,  and  no  preda- 
tory owl  could  hook  him  out  with  its  claw.  Near 
town  or  in  town  the  English  sparrow  would  probably 
drive  him  out;  but  in  the  woods,  I  think,  he  is  rarely 
molested,  though  in  one  instance  I  knew  him  to  be 
dispossessed  by  a  flying  squirrel. 

On  stormy  days  I  have  known  Downy  to  return 
to  his  chamber  in  mid-afternoon,  and  to  lie  abed 
there  till  ten  in  the  morning. 

I  have  no  knowledge  that  any  other  species  of  our 
woodpeckers  excavate  these  winter  quarters,  but 
they  probably  do.  The  chickadee  has  too  slender  a 
beak  for  such  work,  and  usually  spends  the  winter 
nights  in  natural  cavities  or  in  the  abandoned 
holes  of  Downy. 

in 

As  I  am  writing  here  in  my  study  these  November 
days,  a  downy  woodpecker  is  excavating  a  chamber 
in  the  top  of  a  chestnut  post  in  the  vineyard  a  few 
yards  below  me,  or  rather,  he  is  enlarging  a  cham- 
ber which  he  or  one  of  his  fellows  excavated  last  fall; 
he  is  making  it  ready  for  his  winter  quarters.  A  few 
days  ago  I  saw  him  enlarging  the  entrance  and 
making  it  a  more  complete  circle.  Now  he  is  in  the 
chamber  itself  working  away  like  a  carpenter.  I  hear 
his  muffled  hammering  as  I  approach  cautiously  on 
the  grass.  I  make  no  sound  and  the  hammering 
continues  till  I  have  stood  for  a  moment  beside  the 
87 


IN  FIELD  AND  WOOD 

post,  then  it  suddenly  stops  and  Downy's  head  ap- 
pears at  the  door .  He  glances  at  me  suspiciously  and 
then  hurries  away  in  much  excitement. 

How  did  he  know  there  was  some  one  so  near?  As 
birds  have  no  sense  of  smell  it  must  have  been  by 
some  other  means.  I  return  to  my  study  and  in 
about  fifteen  minutes  Downy  is  back  at  work.  Again 
I  cautiously  and  silently  approach,  but  he  is  now 
more  alert,  and  when  I  am  the  width  of  three  grape 
rows  from  him  he  rushes  out  of  his  den  and  lets  off 
his  sharp,  metallic  cry  as  he  hurries  away  to  some 
trees  below  the  hill. 

He  does  not  return  to  his  work  again  that  after- 
noon. But  I  feel  certain  that  he  will  pass  the  night 
there  and  every  night  all  winter  unless  he  is  dis- 
turbed. So  when  my  son  and  I  are  passing  along  the 
path  by  his  post  with  a  lantern  about  eight  o'clock  in 
the  evening,  I  pause  and  say,  "Let's  see  if  Downy 
is  at  home."  A  slight  tap  on  the  post  and  we  hear 
Downy  jump  out  of  bed,  as  it  were,  and  his  head 
quickly  fills  the  doorway.  We  pass  hurriedly  on  and 
he  does  not  take  flight. 

A  few  days  later,  just  at  sundown,  as  I  am  walking 
on  the  terrace  above,  I  see  Downy  come  sweeping 
swiftly  down  through  the  air  on  that  long  galloping 
flight  of  his,  and  alight  on  the  big  maple  on  the  brink 
of  the  hill  above  his  retreat.  He  sits  perfectly  still 
for  a  few  moments,  surveying  the  surroundings,  and, 
seeing  that  the  coast  is  clear,  drops  quickly  and 
88 


IN  FIELD  AND  WOOD 

silently  down  and  disappears  in  the  interior  of  his 
chestnut  lodge.  He  will  do  this  all  winter  long,  com- 
ing home,  when  the  days  are  stormy,  by  four  o'clock, 
and  not  stirring  out  in  the  morning  till  nine  or  ten 
o'clock.  Some  very  cold,  blustery  days  he  will  prob- 
ably not  leave  his  retreat  at  all. 

He  has  no  mate  or  fellow  lodger,  though  there  is 
room  in  his  cabin  for  three  birds  at  least.  Where  the 
female  is  I  can  only  conjecture;  maybe  she  is  occupy- 
ing a  discarded  last  year's  lodge,  as  I  notice  there 
are  a  good  many  new  holes  drilled  in  the  trees  every 
fall,  though  many  of  the  old  ones  still  seem  intact. 

During  the  inclement  season  Downy  is  anything 
but  chivalrous  or  even  generous.  He  will  not  even 
share  with  the  female  the  marrow  bone  or  bit  of 
suet  that  I  fasten  on  the  maple  in  front  of  my  win- 
dow, but  drives  her  away  rudely.  Sometimes  the 
hairy  woodpecker,  a  much  larger  bird,  routs  Downy 
out  and  wrecks  his  house.  Sometimes  the  English 
sparrows  mob  him  and  dispossess  him.  In  the  woods 
the  flying  squirrels  often  turn  him  out  of  doors  and 
furnish  his  chamber  cavity  to  suit  themselves. 


I  am  always  content  if  I  can  bring  home  from  my 
walks  the  least  bit  of  live  natural  history,  as  when, 
the  other  day,  I  saw  a  red-headed  woodpecker  hav- 
ing a  tilt  with  a  red  squirrel  on  the  trunk  of  a  tree. 

Doubtless  the  woodpecker  had  a  nest  near  by,  and 


IN  FIELD  AND  WOOD 

had  had  some  experience  with  this  squirrel  as  a  nest- 
robber.  When  I  first  saw  them,  the  bird  was  chasing 
the  squirrel  around  the  trunk  of  an  oak-tree,  his 
bright  colors  of  black  and  white  and  red  making  his 
every  movement  conspicuous.  The  squirrel  avoided 
him  by  darting  quickly  to  the  other  side  of  the 
tree. 

Then  the  woodpecker  took  up  his  stand  on  the 
trunk  of  a  tree  a  few  yards  distant,  and  every  time 
the  squirrel  ventured  timidly  around  where  he  could 
be  seen  the  woodpecker  would  swoop  down  at  him, 
making  another  loop  of  bright  color.  The  squirrel 
seemed  to  enjoy  the  fun  and  to  tempt  the  bird  to 
make  this  ineffectual  swoop.  Time  and  again  he 
would  poke  his  head  round  the  tree  and  draw  the 
fire  of  his  red-headed  enemy.  Occasionally  the 
bird  made  it  pretty  hot  for  him,  and  pressed  him 
closely,  but  he  could  escape  because  he  had  the 
inside  ring,  and  was  so  artful  a  dodger.  As  often  as 
he  showed  himself  on  the  woodpecker's  side,  the 
bird  would  make  a  vicious  pass  at  him;  and  there 
would  follow  a  moment  of  lively  skurrying  around 
the  trunk  of  the  old  oak;  then  all  would  be  quiet 
again. 

Finally  the  squirrel  seemed  to  get  tired  of  the 
sport,  and  ran  swiftly  to  the  top  and  off  through  the 
branches  into  the  neighboring  trees.  As  this  was 
probably  all  the  woodpecker  was  fighting  for,  he  did 
not  give  chase. 

90 


IN  FIELD  AND  WOOD 

While  I  was  watching  the  squirrel  and  the  wood- 
pecker, I  discovered  a  crow's  nest  with  nearly  grown 
young.  The  parent  crow  came  low  over  the  fence 
into  the  grove,  and  flew  to  a  branch  of  an  oak,  and 
alighted  only  ten  or  twelve  feet  from  the  ground. 
Then  it  flew  to  a  higher  branch  in  another  tree,  and 
then  to  the  top  of  a  group  of  spruces,  where  I  saw 
one  of  the  young  crows  rise  and  take  the  food.  How 
cautious  and  artful  the  whole  proceeding  was ! 

One  of  our  latest  nature  writers  pretends  to  see 
what  the  crow  brings  her  young  at  such  times.  Had 
I  had  the  most  powerful  opera-glasses  on  this  occa- 
sion, I  could  not  have  told  the  nature  of  the  morsel 
she  brought  in  her  beak.  The  thing  is  done  very 
quickly  and  deftly,  and  is  not  meant  for  the  eye  of 
any  onlooker  there  may  chance  to  be  about. 

Thus  all  the  little  ways  and  doings  of  the  birds 
interest  me.  They  are  curiously  human,  while  yet 
they  afford  glimpses  into  a  new  and  strange  world. 
We  look  on;  we  are  interested;  we  understand;  we 
sympathize;  we  may  lend  a  hand;  we  share  much  in 
common;  one  nature  mothers  us  all;  our  lives  run 
parallel  in  many  respects;  similar  problems,  similar 
needs,  similar  fatalities,  similar  tribulations,  come 
home  to  us  all;  and  yet  we  are  separated  by  a  gulf, 
the  gulf  that  lies  between  conscious,  reasoning  soul 
and  unconscious,  unreasoning  instinct.  But  I  must 
not  plunge  into  the  gulf,  nor  seek  to  clear  it  here. 


91 


IN  FIELD  AND  WOOD 


It  always  amuses  me  to  see  in  late  May  a  "  chippy'* 
or  a  goldfinch  ride  down  the  dandelion  stalk  that 
is  carrying  its  frail  globe  of  down  high  above  the 
grass.  You  are  looking  out  over  the  lawn  when  you 
see  one  of  these  silver  balls  suddenly  go  down.  A 
chippy  or  a  goldfinch  has  thrown  itself  upon  the 
stalk  and  borne  it  to  the  ground  for  the  seed. 

The  dandelion  seeds  are  about  the  first  that  ripen, 
and  the  seed-eating  birds  are  hard  put  for  food  at 
this  time.  Hence  these  globes  are  a  godsend  to  them. 
Not  long  before  I  had  seen  the  goldfinches  and  the 
purple  finches  pecking  to  pieces  the  button-balls  of 
the  sycamore  for  the  seeds  they  held,  put  up  so  com- 
pactly. 

In  May  the  squirrels  are  hard  put  also.  It  is  at 
this  season  that  the  chipmunk  pulls  up  the  corn,  and 
that  the  red  squirrel  robs  the  birds'  nests  of  both 
eggs  and  young.  Their  last  year's  stores  of  nuts 
and  grains  are  exhausted,  and  the  new  crop  is  not 
yet  formed.  I  think  that  the  chipmunk  has  learned 
that  there  is  something  for  him  also  in  the  dandelion 
seed,  but  I  doubt  whether  the  red  squirrel  has. 

The  latter  has  found  out  that  there  is  some- 
thing for  him  in  the  seeds  of  the  elm-tree,  which 
usually  get  fully  developed  in  May.  The  elm  affords 
short  commons,  but  it  is  better  than  nothing.  The 
chaff  is  big  and  the  grain  small,  but  probably  sweet. 
92 


IN  FIELD  AND  WOOD 

Morning,  noon,  and  night  I  see  the  squirrels  feeding 
in  the  elms  about  my  cabin,  and  see  the  road  strewn 
with  the  elm-flakes  from  which  the  germ  in  the 
centre  has  been  cut. 

Do  they  know  an  elm-tree  when  they  see  it,  or  do 
they  explore  all  the  trees  in  quest  of  food?  If,  again, 
I  belonged  to  the  new  school  of  nature  writers,  I 
should  say  they  know  an  elm  as  well  as  you  or  I,  and 
the  date  on  which  the  seeds  are  edible,  and  that 
they  taught  this  wood-lore  to  their  young.  But,  as  it 
is,  I  will  only  venture  to  say  that  at  this  season  there 
they  are  in  the  topmost  branches  of  the  scattered 
elms,  very  busy  with  these  green  scales,  reaching  and 
swaying  and  hanging  by  their  hind  feet,  or  sitting 
up  in  that  pretty  way  with  tails  over  backs  and 
hands  deftly  submitting  the  samara  to  the  teeth. 

The  red  squirrel  is  much  more  of  a  "  hustler " 
than  is  the  gray,  and  will  make  shift  to  live  where 
the  latter  will  starve.  The  red  squirrel  abides,  while 
the  gray  seems  to  go  and  come  with  the  seasons  of 
scarcity  or  of  plenty.  Yet  I  have  seen  the  gray  eating 
the  fruit  of  the  poison-ivy  and  apparently  relish- 
ing it.  But  he  rarely  disturbs  the  birds,  though 
of  this  misdemeanor  he  is  probably  not  entirely 
innocent. 

Small  things,  small  doings,  train  our  powers  of 
observation.  'The  big  things  all  can  see.  Who  sees 
the  finer,  shyer  play  of  wild  life  that  goes  on  about 
us?  Not  all  of  nature's  book  is  writ  large;  the  fine 

93 


IN  FIELD  AND  WOOD 

print  is  quite  as  interesting,  and  it  is  this  that  trains 
the  eye. 

A  schoolgirl  wrote  me  one  day  that  she  had  seen 
a  hawk  carrying  a  snake  in  its  beak.  Now,  if  she  had 
had  a  trained  eye,  she  would  have  seen  that  the 
hawk  carried  the  snake  in  its  talons.  One  of  our 
recent  nature  writers  has  made  the  same  mistake 
in  his  book.  Birds  of  prey  all  carry  their  game  in 
their  talons;  other  birds  carry  it  in  their  beaks. 

A  recent  magazine  writer  errs  in  the  other  di- 
rection when  he  makes  the  crow  carry  in  its  claws 
the  corn  it  has  pulled  up,  as  the  crow  is  one  of  the 
birds  that  carries  everything  in  its  beak. 

Emerson  says,  "The  day  does  not  seem  wholly 
profane  in  which  we  have  given  heed  to  some  natural 
object."  It  is  such  little  incidents  as  I  have  been 
relating  that  redeem  many  of  my  own  days,  and  give 
to  my  pastimes  a  touch  of  something  I  would  not 
willingly  miss  from  them. 


CENTRAL  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
University  of  California,  San  Diego 

DATE  DUE 


Serra  M 


C139 


UCSD  Libr. 


